


I Am Not Who I Became

by mab_di



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Boats and Ships, Commercial Fisherman Draco Malfoy, Depressed Harry Potter, Drama & Romance, Failed Writer Harry Potter, Finland (Country), Fishing, H/D Fan Fair 2019, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magical Theory, Magically Powerful Harry Potter, Minor Draco Malfoy/Original Male Character(s), Muscular Draco Malfoy, Near Death Experiences, POV Alternating, Post-Second War with Voldemort, Recluse Harry Potter, Redemption, Rough Sex, School Reunion, Secondary Theme: Book Fair, Secondary Theme: Travel Fair, Sex Magic, Smut, Suicidal Thoughts, Wandless Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-01-05 03:09:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 93,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21206417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mab_di/pseuds/mab_di
Summary: Draco left England after the trials and has travelled the world meeting wizards and Muggles from different cultures and with vastly different relationships to magic, each other, and the natural world. Now he's a fisherman in Finland on commercial vessels. Harry has been struggling since the war and has become a recluse while trying to write his autobiography. An invitation to the Hogwarts class of 1998's 15th reunion isn't welcomed by either of them, but neither could predict how the night, and their reunion, will upend their lives.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For Prompt #[198](https://docs.google.com/document/d/16er_sVwwFtbVQxtiFqHRWhw09kwNYhywsB-R48qtVPU/edit#).
> 
> First of all, thanks to the fair mods for putting this fair together, and for giving me the time to finish a story that ended up being twice as long as I'd intended.
> 
> I can't thank my betas enough for their help with this story, which, in addition to being long, required a terrific amount of research, meaning extra work for them. Kate not only provided encouragement, fantastic feedback, and edits, but she did a thorough Brit Pick and even came through with actual fly-fishing knowledge! I can't thank her enough. Sonofsilly has been my cheerleader and trusted editor for years now. She came in under a very tight timeline and helped me clean up and fill out the story in ways I would have missed. Any errors or faults are most definitely my own, as I'm often known not to take my editors' advice. 
> 
> The Harry Potter characters and universe belong to J.K. Rowling, and what a lovely universe it is.

It’s past eight o’clock and the light is finally bleeding from the sky, but lengthening days don’t mean warmth off the coast of Finland in March. The temperature is at freezing with the wind. The water around the small pelagic trawler slaps the hull as Draco watches a weary owl approach from the west. He doesn’t recognise it as his mother’s or Pansy’s, the only people he’s corresponded with for years. His own post owl is less his than she is a creature who lends her services to Draco when it suits her. He found the raven-feathered beast in the woods near the hut where he ice fishes when he has the time. He named her Severa because she reminds him of Snape. He hasn’t seen her in months.

The tawny stranger wobbles in for a landing as though it’s flown for days with the blood red envelope tied to its foot. Draco holds out his arm for the owl and removes the envelope, thick card stock addressed with his name in neat calligraphy, and slips it into a breast pocket of the heavy wool coat he wears against the Finnish winds. His fellow fishermen on the trawler are a dozen wizards and a couple of witches, a number of them better correspondents than Draco so he doesn’t have to go far to find a snail for the bird. He entreats the owl to rest and it makes a nest for itself in the shadow of the prow, where the watchman makes room for the visitor. Draco is curious about the envelope, which looks like an invitation. But he’ll read it later, after he’s done the job he’s come on deck to do. It’s time to haul their nets out of the sea and sort through the catch.

It’s arduous work and Draco is at it well past sunset and into the first hours of darkness. He’s joined by three of the crew and they work together like a practiced team. The others speak English much better than Draco speaks Finnish, but he doesn’t expect them to use English on his account. They speak very little, in fact. Their voices are drowned in the churning of chains that raise the nets, and the flapping of fish deprived of oxygen. The wizards wear gloves to protect their hands from the sting of fish scales that work their way under the skin, and scrabble at the nets to remove any life caught there that should be saved. The net kills most of the fish they catch even before they bring them in so there’s a very short window to identify any unwanted species still living and return them to the dark waves below. The fish are fresh and smell of salt water when they’re pulled from the sea, but the trawler is carrying weeks of catch in its hold and no matter how much ice and salt they pack the fish in, the stench of herring is in the wizards’ clothes and hair and the soles of their boots.

The work strains muscles in Draco’s shoulders and back and thighs that he’s built from more than five years of labour aboard vessels like this one, and he relishes the way his heart rate rises, his lungs expand, and sweat cleanses him from the inside out. No memories, no desires, no shame. Only work.

Later, when it’s his turn to eat and rest, he spells himself clean and realises he’s begun to miss the feel of an actual shower on his back. They use relatively little magic on board. Their food larder holds significantly more, and more varied, food than its size should allow. There’s always fresh water to drink. But they rarely spell themselves warm against the elements and never take short cuts with the sail rigging or hauling the fish. It took some getting used to. Draco hadn’t understood the point of labour that could be accomplished with a wand. He’s learned to appreciate the small ways Nordic wizarding vessels accomplish cleanliness and order with magic while preserving a connection to the sea through work they do with their hands.

When he’d been at sea only six months on and off with several wizarding vessels and complained of the labour, they told him not to come back until he’d been out with Muggle fishermen. He found a crew in a Muggle bar in Helsinki and spent one of the most gruelling months of his life with them on board their small boat. The filth they lived with, the freeze dried strips of pork and salmon that passed as meals day in and day out, the rationing of fresh water—all of it nearly broke him.

Worse than any of that was the sense of vulnerability. Even wizarding vessels sink sometimes. No amount of magic can entirely protect humans from the power of the sea. Brooms, the ability to exert some small control over wind and water, and Apparition as a last resort often provide escape, though, in the worst of storms.

He’s heard stories of a wizarding vessel going down with everyone on board. He had one close call when a wave swamped the boat he was on before anyone could react, but they had reacted, and they’d survived. Nothing he’s experienced sailing with wizards was as terrifying as the experience of weathering a storm with Muggles aboard a boat with no broom and Apparition an unthinkable choice. It was the revelation of his own weakness—helplessness—that resolved him to get strong, physically and mentally. He’s still struggling to build mental fortitude, but his mind is calmer than it has been in twenty years. Perhaps calmer than it’s ever been. 

When he’s finally settled in his bunk, his thighs stretching a pair of long johns in a way that tells him he’s put on muscle in the past few weeks at sea, he turns the heavy envelope over in his hands and slips his finger under the seal. Inside is an invitation, as he’d guessed. The occasion, however, is a shock.

The Hogwarts Class of 1998 Reunion Committee

Invites You To Our 15thReunion 

Where: The Great Hall, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

When: Eight O’Clock in the Evening, Saturday, 29 June, 2013

Dress: Semi-formal 

*Accommodation available in Hogsmeade for those who wish to stay on for the weekend. 

Please owl your RSVP to Hermione Granger-Weasley by 15 June.

Granger. He lets the petty meanness arise in him at the thought of her. It does without effort. His father raised him to ensure the uncharitable thoughts arrive instantly. They require no consciousness on his part, simply spring forth. But now he can observe them, notice the utter lack of feeling behind them, interrogate them. Hermione Granger is Muggle-born. Reunions are a Muggle tradition. He’s heard of them. 

Self-awareness has its limits. Honestly, what could possibly possess someone as intelligent as Granger—Mrs Granger-Weasley—to believe that this, of all the things to borrow from Muggles (and he’s learned quite a few things from Muggles in the last decade or so), is a tradition worth borrowing? It’s twisted. The thought of their war-torn class tittering over wine and canapes fifteen years later, reminiscing about the deaths they’d witnessed or, worse, caused.

Draco wonders, given Granger’s intelligence, if it isn't Weasley’s brainless idea. The fact that Granger is on board means something though. He hasn’t seen a single classmate since shortly after the trials, when he left the country and never looked back. He knows from Pansy and his mother that the English wizarding community has moved on from the war. He knows that England’s wizards are not rent and hurting as they were when he left. On some level he knows this, but it’s still impossible to imagine how a reunion of his class, of all classes, could be a good idea. Even the choice of the year, fifteen years after they should have graduated. But how many didn’t make it alive to 1998? How many actually graduated? He tries to imagine Pansy, or Blaise, mingling with the Hufflepuffs. Greg Goyle as a grown man. He isn’t, in Draco’s mind. In his mind, Greg is still a teenager; sullen, nasty, unimaginative, and mourning Vince’s death as though it were yesterday. It’s uncomfortable to imagine his classmates at all.

His mind skirts around the most uncomfortable thought of all, but then he touches the edge of the thought and succumbs. Draco doesn’t think of Harry Potter often. He works actively not to. Sometimes he catches a reflection of his bare chest, and the faint scar there forces him to remember the pain, just as quickly as the faded mark on his arm reminds him of every moment of his own cruelty. There are no thoughts of Harry Potter that aren’t accompanied by shame.

Draco is tempted to banish the invitation and the RSVP card, but chooses to set it aside on the small shelf by his bunk and banish the contemplation of it instead. An RSVP saying he won’t attend is the courteous thing to do. He’s mature enough to know he owes that much to Granger.

____________________

The boat docks in Helsinki a few days later, on the 1st of April, and Draco is eager to spend some time in the tiny shower back in his flat not far from the Hietalahti Market. There’s a lot of work to do when they dock, first, and he tries to keep his mind in the present. He’s friendly with many of the wizards on board, and he wants to keep it that way. He also wants to keep working, which means pulling his weight as they unload the boat and scrub it clean from top to bottom. By necessity, they dock among Muggles in the harbour and have to ready the boat without magic above deck and very little below. Draco volunteers to swab the deck. It’s raining and everyone’s exhausted, so it’s not a popular task. He’s still trying to prove himself a little, even after five years at sea. But he’s also learned that physical labour under hard circumstances is the strongest protection he has against the mental self-flagellation he’s prone to.

As he’s finishing up, he sees Eetu climbing up from below deck. Eetu’s a big man, bigger than Draco. He wears his light brown hair at shoulder length, currently tucked under a wool skullcap against the rain. He has a strong, bearded jaw and blue eyes, and Draco would call him burly-handsome. He isn’t Draco’s type, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Eetu glances Draco’s way and Draco imagines he’s wondering if they’re going to keep fucking now they’re on land. Draco’s wondering the same thing, but isn’t sure it’s a good idea. They get on well, which is to say that, like the wizards at work on the nets, they don’t talk much. They’ve provided each other simple pleasure on the last few vessels they’ve sailed together, and Draco worries that bringing the sex back to his flat will only complicate things. This is the first time they’ve both had a break between jobs in more than six months, and Draco can feel the question about how they’re going to handle it hanging between them. Neither of them has anything lined up until the middle of April.

Draco is lonely. It’s an odd thing to feel, given how much time he spends at sea and how little privacy he has aboard the trawlers. The invitation to his Hogwarts reunion packed away in his knapsack along with his simple wardrobe and a handful of personal items is a reminder that he left his childhood and adolescence behind, and that the men he calls friends now, including Eetu, wouldn’t recognise the person he was then or the place he came from. Most of the time he takes solace in that, but contemplating spending a couple of weeks with Eetu in Helsinki has him wondering who he’s become. He wonders if he knows himself well enough to have anything more than a convenient and temporary relationship with another person.

He decides he’s not ready to foreclose the possibility of seeing Eetu, and also not ready to invite him back to his. He stops to talk to Eetu on his way below deck with the mop and bucket of filthy water. He’ll spell it clean and dump it overboard, but he can’t do that in the open air with so many Muggles about. “Do you have plans?”

Eetu eyes him up and down, the suggestion plain in his expression. “You can be my plan.”

“I’ve got things I have to take care of. Meet me for dinner on Friday?” He tells Eetu about the food stall run by a talented witch from Portugal, the only witch in the Muggle market by his flat. “She makes the best grilled octopus I’ve ever had.”

Eetu smiles. “Dinner, yes. And then?”

Draco nods. “And then.”

“Okay.” 

____________________

It’s seven o’clock on Sunday morning, the second Sunday on land, and the sun is already up, forcing Draco from a too short sleep. He let Eetu spend the night for the first time, and he’s regretting that decision as he struggles out from under the heavy arm pinning him to the mattress not nearly wide enough for the both of them. Some Finns are parsimonious with their beds. Nothing like Americans. Draco spent six months in America about eight years ago, and although he didn’t find a home there, he discovered the joys of a plush, California King mattress. He could spell this bed larger, but the small bedroom in the Muggle flat wouldn’t hold it.

There’s an owl pecking at his windowpane. It must have been that sound, and not the sun, that woke him. The shaft of sunlight that found him on the bed was misleading, it turns out. He watches the small break in the clouds close as he opens the window and lets the familiar grey owl hop inside. It’s misting rain and dark clouds are advancing from the north, almost cold enough to snow. He scoops his silk robe from the chair and slips it on, holding out his arm for Elektra, who digs her talons in while he carries her out of the room. He closes the door quietly behind him, not wanting to disturb Eetu. Wanting some privacy to read Pansy’s letter. He has a treat of dried herring for Elektra in the kitchen, and he makes a nest for her with a dishtowel on the kitchen windowsill. It’s more than two days’ flight from London to Helsinki, even for a post owl, and Elektra usually rests a day or two before returning.

The letter she’s brought is in Pansy’s distinctive silver envelope and written on parchment Pansy special orders from a shop in Paris. Draco knows this is why he hasn’t formally declined Granger’s invitation to the reunion yet. He’s been waiting to hear what Pansy thinks of the affair.

_Dear Draco,_

_I hope you haven’t fallen into the sea, taken as the unwilling spouse to a merman. Only the MerKing will do for you. _

_Seriously, Draco, you owe me a letter. And Hermione tells me she hasn’t received your RSVP yet. _

_Yes, let’s discuss the reunion. I know what you’re thinking. Please do consider coming. Rather, you must come. I thought it was a wretched idea when Hermione told me about it. It was her husband’s idea, as you can imagine. I’m sure I had the very same thoughts you had initially. Why would I want to stand around drinking second rate champagne with a bunch of aging Hufflepuffs and self-righteous Gryffindors? Even if we hadn’t fought a war and lost our last years at Hogwarts to violence, even if you and I hadn’t been miserable human beings back then, why would I want to subject myself to an unseemly exercise in sentimentality? _

_But then Hermione asked me what I would think of her if she and I hadn’t worked together for the past decade, if we hadn’t seen each other in fifteen years. She asked me to think about people I haven’t seen since the war, and to imagine them today. I thought of Blaise, who disappeared even more quickly than you did after the trials. I tried to picture him as a thirty-three-year-old man and I saw an eighteen-year-old boy, growing into his looks but still smug in a way that is only possible at eighteen. I thought of you. I realise I haven’t seen you in almost fifteen years. I know you’re not the same person, Draco, but I don’t know precisely who you’ve become. I don’t even know what you look like. And Hermione? If I hadn’t seen her in fifteen years, I would imagine her an ill-humoured know-it-all with no fashion sense. Well, she still doesn’t have much fashion sense, but she’s a friend. She’s brilliant, and funny, and she’s right about this. It’s not despite the war, but because of it, that we need this reunion. A chance to see that we aren’t the only ones who have grown up. _

_We need you there, Draco. I know you’re ashamed of the mark you carry and what it means about who you were. Trust me, I know all about shame. But you held us together. And even though we were so very wrong, we were also friends. It won’t be the same if you’re not there, not for me or any of the Slytherins._

_Because I knew you well once, and I can’t imagine this has changed in fifteen years, I expect you’ll wonder if Potter is coming. The truth is that it’s unlikely. Hermione will try her best to get him there, but he’s become a recluse and as much as you’ve turned your back on your past, Harry Potter is hiding from the world. In Scotland, I hear. Outside Aberdeen. Which means he hasn’t far to travel to Hogwarts, but word is he doesn’t leave his home. You’ll say you’re relieved he won’t be there and secretly you’ll be disappointed. I can’t help that. Come for me. Come to London and stay with me. A week. A month. Visit your mother, for Merlin’s sake. Her townhouse is lovely. Nothing like the Manor. She’s my neighbour, as you know. She’s nearly fifteen years older than when you last saw her, and it’s time for a visit. We can spend an hour at the reunion, or four. We can Floo back to London the minute you hate it, or we can spend a weekend in Hogsmeade. Whatever you like. Just promise you’ll come. _

_Your friend, still,_

_Pansy _

Draco recognises the echo of his own thoughts from a couple of weeks earlier in Pansy’s words—_I don’t know precisely who you’ve become_—and can’t suppress the pang of nostalgia he feels. Not for the Pansy he’s gotten to know through correspondence over the last decade, but for the savage wit and incurable snob she was at Hogwarts, for the girl who wouldn’t have given Hermione Granger the time of day, let alone jump aboard her Reunion bandwagon. Of course, thirty-three-year-old Pansy is no more like sixteen-year-old Pansy than Draco is like his sixteen-year-old self, and he wouldn’t befriend the younger versions of either of them today. The nostalgia is an emotion all its own, close but not the same as longing for the past. He is in the grip of something though, this emotion, this nostalgia, and it dares him to feel more than he typically allows.

He glances up from rereading the letter to see Eetu’s large, naked body in the frame of the doorway. “Who is this letter from?” Eetu’s English is excellent and only identifiable as a second language from his slight accent and the way he uses it as a blunt instrument, always going for the shortest distance to his meaning.

“An old friend from school. She wants me to return to England for a visit.”

Eetu nods and makes his way to the kettle, which is spelled to dispense hot water on demand, one of the few luxuries, along with his green silk robe, Draco has indulged since he moved into this flat. Eetu has only been in his kitchen a couple of times but he makes himself at home, pulling mugs out of the cupboard and setting strong black tea to steep for them both. “You will see your mother?”

Draco thinks it must be a cultural thing, but Eetu is overly preoccupied with his relationship with Narcissa. He asked Draco about his mother the day they were introduced a couple of years earlier. “Is your mother a good woman?” “Are you close?” That’s what Eetu had wanted to know about him before he knew anything else.

“I haven’t decided to go. But yes, it would be a chance to see my mother.”

“You must go, then.”

Draco cinches the thin robe tighter around his waist. He’s inured to the drafts in his flat after years at sea but the conversation and the sight of Eetu’s unabashed nudity in his kitchen leaves him chilly. Draco was an argumentative child, and absolutely contrary as a teen. It’s one of the qualities he’s fought hard to train out of himself. He’s learned to do the work assigned to him without complaint, to stand down when he disagrees with a captain about his business, to speak up only when he believes that not to would put someone in danger. But he wants to argue now. He must go? Says who? Says Pansy? Says Eetu? He complains in his head. Who are they to tell him what he must do? He doesn’t say it out loud. Instead he nods and changes the subject.

“When do you sail?”

Eetu, his penis flopping as he moves, fishes another treat, a little ball of freeze-dryed reindeer, out of the jar where Draco keeps them and feeds it to Elektra, who is watching them from her perch on the windowsill.

Draco wishes he’d put some pants on.

“Wednesday. Uncle is sorry you won’t join us.”

Eetu’s uncle, Akseli, is a mentor of sorts. Draco met him his first winter in Finland, ice fishing for burbot on Lake Niemisjärvet. Draco had learned fly-fishing from Muggles in Wyoming and had latched onto it as a meditative hobby. It had also forced him to begin re-examining his relationship with the natural world, which had been as perverted by his father as his relationship with humans, magic and Muggle alike. Akseli found him still learning how different it is to catch fish under a solid sheet of ice, and invited him to try commercial fishing. Draco had boarded Akseli’s trawler a month later. 

“Bad timing,” Draco says. In truth, he’s avoided sailing with Eetu and Akseli together since he and Eetu started having sex. He worries Akseli will get attached to the idea of his nephew settling down. If Draco ever entertains fantasies that settling down with Eetu could cure his loneliness, the past couple of weeks have unburdened him of that particular delusion. He’s not in love, and although it strikes him as a ridiculously old fashioned notion, he’s pretty sure he’d have to be to want someone in his life like that.

Eetu hands him his tea. “How long will you be at sea?” 

“Two months, and a bit,” Draco says. He’s not due back in Helsinki from his next job until the 25th of June. He’d have almost no time to turn around before he’d have to get to London, or straight to Hogwarts, if he intended to go. Elektra watches him as he thinks this and he knows he’s going to spend the next twenty-four hours worrying over a decision he thought he’d already made. 

“And then you will visit your mother.”

Draco sips his tea and nods again, not interested in an argument with Eetu when he likely won’t see him for months. This feels like an end of something that never quite got off the ground.

____________________ 

It’s Draco’s birthday and he’s trying not to resent pulling the early morning shift, cleaning and freezing the remaining catch from the night before and storing it in the freezers below deck. The past six weeks have been some of the most miserable he’s spent at sea since he started commercial fishing. He should have been more cautious when he signed up with this crew. He’d been so keen to avoid sailing with Eetu and Akseli that he’d ignored the slight misgivings he’d had when he met the boat’s captain. The wizard has turned out to run an undisciplined ship, half the crew drunk on any given night, and the work falling heavily on anyone who’s sober enough to do it. The thought of another twenty days of this is nearly unbearable.

He throws himself into the job and chats occasionally in Finnish with Dalmar, one of only a few wizards on board Draco can stand. Several hours into his shift, he’s coming up from below to haul the next box of frozen fish down to the freezers when he sees a large, black bird making its way from the east. He recognises the owl’s sure flight instantly, and smiles for the first time all day. Maybe all week. He lingers on deck until Severa has landed on his outstretched arm and shaken out her feathers.

“Hello,” Draco says, petting her head.

She squawks in reply and blinks at him, large grey eyes that he fancies are nearly the colour of his own. Dalmar sees them and brings Severa a snail from the basket where they keep them.

“No letter,” Dalmar says, watching Severa swallow the snail whole. She’ll regurgitate the shell in a bit. Draco finds owls’ eating habits disgusting, but as with so much in his life these days, he’s trained himself not to judge. Or at least, to keep his judgement to himself.

“No letter.” Draco agrees. Severa rarely brings him letters. But when she does appear, she has a habit of hanging about until he’s brought himself to write one to his mother. Sometimes he thinks the odds that he found a magic post owl wandering free in the woods of Finland and that she wasn’t planted there by his mother to encourage him to write are slim indeed.

“Rest,” he tells her. “I have work to do.”

Later, when he’s finished his shift, he leaves Severa on her perch above board and goes down to his bunk. His bunkmate is snoring, still, at noon, from the top bunk. The cabin reeks of soured whisky that seeps from his bunkmate’s pores. And rotten fish. This boat is not kept nearly as clean as Draco prefers. He rips off the foul gloves he wears and hurls them into a hamper by the door. But before he can Scourgify and change his filthy clothes, he finds himself pulling a small tin from under his bed. He keeps parchment and quills in it. It also contains the RSVP card he never got around to returning, as well as Pansy’s last letter, which he hasn’t answered.

He opens the tin and picks the RSVP card out from the bottom, turning the heavy card stock over in his hands. He’s thirty-three years old today. He thought he might hear from his mother. He still might. And he can’t blame Pansy for ignoring the date. He hasn’t been much of a friend to her. The thought of the reunion still makes him slightly nauseated, but he’s lonelier than he’s felt in a decade, when he was wandering aimlessly, driven only by a need to be away, wherever away was. Perhaps now he’s motivated by the realisation that he and Eetu aren’t going anywhere, or the fact that he’s chosen to sail with a bunch of drunken strangers rather than Akseli, the man who has been, if not like a father, fatherly at least.

Draco tries not to think much of Lucius, but his father had spoiled him rotten, especially on his birthday. It’s constant labour to reframe memories that once sat at the heart of everything he valued and look on them instead as reminders of the hate he was taught and the pain he and his family are responsible for. Lucius has been dead for more than a decade, and Draco, when he’s most honest with himself, can admit it’s almost more work not to mourn for him than it would be to let himself feel the grief. 

“Fuck,” he mutters, gripping the RSVP card tightly in his callused hand. He doesn’t think he wants to go to this ridiculous reunion, but he does want to see Pansy. He would like to see Blaise, if he would go. He’d even like to see Greg, he thinks. At least in this moment it seems like not such a bad idea. The fact that he’s nearly desperate to lay eyes on Harry Potter, too, after almost fifteen years, tells him he’s in a bad place. But before he can second-guess the horrid mood he’s in, he ticks “Will Attend” on the card and sits down to write to Pansy and his mother to tell them he’s coming. Severa will stick around until he’s finished the letters. 

____________________

He gives himself two days in Helsinki to tidy his flat and get in touch with Akseli to sort out his next job, which will require him back in Helsinki in late July. Not that he plans to be away that long, but he has the time if he wants it. He shaves and trims his hair to his shoulders before he goes, conscious that even well-groomed, which he hasn't been for months at sea, he looks very little like the boy he was when he left home. 

He makes the trip to London on the night of the 27th of June. It’s been ages since he’s Apparated anywhere further than Helsinki to Lake Niemisjärvet and he’d been unsure how many jumps it would take. He’d fretted about it until he got to his flat and found a Portkey and a note from Pansy telling him she would be expecting him. The Portkey is a literal key, though large and heavy enough that he has to hold it with two hands. He’s packed a small knapsack and realises he’ll have to purchase an appropriate dinner outfit when he gets to London. He used to love to shop, and although he doesn’t think of it often, he imagines he’ll enjoy it still. Assuming Pansy comes along.

The short journey by Portkey is exhilarating, and a bit terrifying after years with his feet planted on nothing more tumultuous than the deck of a boat. But then he’s standing alone in the large lounge of what looks like a tastefully decorated London townhouse.

“Hello?” he calls toward the open doorway. “Anyone home?”

There’s no answer, so he sets his knapsack down by the fireplace and ventures into the house. It’s night and the lights are out in the rest of the home, so the fact that the lounge has been left ablaze tells him Pansy must have been expecting him, even if she herself doesn’t seem to be here. Pansy is married to a bloke named Grim, or at least that’s how she refers to him. Draco’s never been sure if it’s short for something like Grimwald, or if it’s meant to be a descriptive nickname. He’s never met Grim, who is a graduate of Durmstrang and several years their senior, but he imagines him to be the serious sort. They have a nine-year-old daughter, Cate, who is apparently chummy with the Granger-Weasley girl. All of this Draco knows from Pansy’s letters, and none of it has seemed real until this moment, standing in Pansy’s darkened house, seeing signs of a both a husband (large wellies and a man’s overcoat in the front hall) and child (a child’s artwork—precocious, no question—on the walls in what looks like a playroom). 

Draco casts Lumos with his wand as he makes his way through the empty house. A clock strikes ten upstairs, and it occurs to him that his mother lives only three houses down and is likely waiting up for him. 

Unsure of how best to travel, he decides to walk, opening and closing the front door behind him, hoping the locking mechanism works without any interference from him. They’re in an upscale wizarding neighbourhood, so presumably the door will only open for Pansy and her family. He’s never been here, but he knows his mother’s address and finds her house easily. She moved here shortly after the trials, when the Ministry confiscated Malfoy Manor and the Malfoy fortune. She lives on a more modest Black family inheritance, a small portion of which Draco took with him when he left England. It’s been a decade since he accepted any money from his mother, and he’s relieved to see that at least from the outside, it looks like she’s landed in a comfortable home.

Several rooms on the ground floor of the modern townhouse are lit, and he looks down at his clothes as he waits for someone to answer his knock. He’s dressed in his nicest slacks, which are dark and worn, and the only button-down shirt he still owns. His mother will not approve.

He expects to be greeted by a house elf, but instead it’s Pansy who opens the door. She gapes as soon as she sees him.

“Merlin! Draco, is that you?”

He’s tempted to say he’s not sure, standing there in front of one of his oldest friends, who is both familiar and unknown to him. He’d recognise her, he believes, even out of context. The sleek hair in a neat bob, the stylish suit and red lipstick. But she’s a grown woman, beautiful in a way she wasn’t yet at eighteen. “Pansy,” is all he can say, as she pulls him in for a hug. She’s smaller than he remembers.

She lets go of him and beckons him inside. “Narcissa!” she calls down the hall. “He’s here!” And then to Draco she says, “Whatever you do, you must tell her she hasn’t aged a day.”

Draco nods and thinks he’s not ready for his mother to have aged, so it’s just as well.

Except the woman he finds in the kitchen has aged, more than the nearly fifteen years he’s been away. She’s still beautiful in an icy sort of way, long hair shining black, but she looks fragile, thinner and older than her fifty-eight years. “Draco, dear,” she says, rising and kissing him on both cheeks before taking his hands and giving him a critical once-over. It’s a few anxious moments before she smiles at him. “I’m relieved. You look well.”

“He looks like a Muggle rugby player,” Pansy says. “I’m not sure I would have recognised you.”

“Manual labour seems to agree with you,” Narcissa says, and Draco isn’t sure if that’s meant to be a dig. It would have been, in the past. He has no idea what to think, now.

“It does,” he says, in case there’s any question. “I like working outdoors.” And then he remembers to add, “You look well, too, Mother. You haven’t aged a bit.”

Narcissa frowns at that. “Please, Draco, let’s not lie to each other.”

Draco decides not to press on the sore spot and moves further into the kitchen to join them at the table, where it looks like they’ve had a late supper. He doesn’t see a house elf about, but he expects one to appear at any moment.

“Have you eaten?” Pansy is already at the stove, carving what’s left of a chicken from a platter and spooning roasted vegetables onto a plate.

Draco hasn’t eaten since much earlier in the day and is grateful for the meal, though curious about who prepared it. He doesn’t want to insult either of them, but it appears… “Did you…?” he ventures.

“I cook, yes,” says Pansy. “Your mother’s the real chef though.”

“Mother?”

“I have a house elf who comes several days a week, so please don’t give me that look, Draco. I know very well you’ve been living without domestic help since you left home and you seem to be thriving. The world didn’t stop turning in your absence.” It isn’t that he expected it to. Guilt over abandoning Narcissa when she’d already lost her husband has forced him for years to imagine—at least to hope—that she was doing as well as she sounded in letters. But the truth is that it was hard to believe she had gone on. “I’ve learned to cook, and I quite enjoy it.”

Draco's drive to leave was entirely selfish, and he loves his mother for having let him go. It’s eased his mind to know that Pansy was close by and looking in on Narcissa, but it’s only hitting him now how grateful he ought to be that he was allowed to leave them behind. “I should have known,” he says. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”

Narcissa and Pansy both look sad for a moment, but then Narcissa waves away his apology and pats him on the cheek, beckoning him to sit where Pansy has laid his plate. “Nonsense. I knew you’d come back when you were ready.”

____________________

By the time Pansy takes his arm for a Side-Along to Hogwarts on Saturday evening, Draco feels as prepared as he’s likely to feel for the night ahead. He’s bought himself a suit, over Pansy’s objections. She lobbied for robes, but relented when it was clear it meant something to him. He’d enjoyed his day with her, even if he felt disorientated being back in England, in London, everything familiar and foreign at once. Pansy’s husband had taken their daughter to his parents’ house for a long weekend, and Pansy confessed that Grim, which turns out to be short for Grimwald, and Cate had plans to visit the Granger-Weasley girl at her grandparents’. Confessed, because Pansy is clearly self-conscious about the connection she has with the Weasley family, if more happily resigned to her friendship with Granger. Draco wishes he could find a way to tell her it’s okay. None of it means anything to him now. Or rather, it does, but it doesn’t mean what it used to. He respects Pansy more for the ways she’s changed, even if it’ll take him a while to adjust to the version of his friend who spent Friday evening on a Muggle mobile phone talking to Hermione Granger about the DJ’s set list.

The first person he sees when he lands on the front steps of Hogwarts is Headmistress McGonagall. Unlike his mother, she truly doesn’t look a day older, though she’s old enough. She’s greeting a line of well-dressed men and women as they file into the enormous doors, and Draco thinks this could be any crowd of strangers before he focuses and begins to see the vaguely familiar faces around him. Above them he sees younger, curious faces peering out of windows. School is still in session. He can’t fathom that Hogwarts has gone on, restored—altered, surely, but not in any way obvious at first glance—while he’s met witches and wizards in far corners of the world whose histories owe little or nothing to this place that meant everything to him. 

“Mr Malfoy,” McGonagall says when it’s their turn to enter. “You’ve grown up nicely.” He listens for sarcasm in the tone, but it almost sounds like she means it.

“Headmistress, it’s good to see you.” He’s surprised, but it feels true.

“Welcome back,” she says, and purses her lips in a smile.

Pansy says hello to McGonagall and drags Draco over the threshold, whispering in his ear. “She’s perving on you, I swear." 

“That’s disgusting, Pansy,” he says, and surveys the pristine stonework as he ushers her into the Great Hall.

Pansy peers around the Hall as though she’s looking for someone in particular. Draco has been restrained for two days now, never once asking after anyone other than Blaise, whom Pansy assures him will be here. The fact that Pansy hasn’t offered information about Potter either means he’s definitely coming, or he’s definitely not coming. Or she doesn’t know. So, it could mean anything.

The Great Hall has been transformed into a large nightclub, with a dance floor installed in the centre, the DJ’s booth next to it. There are bars on either side of the room, a large buffet along the back wall, and tables spotted around the edges of the Hall. The house flags fly from the ceiling, but that’s the only reminder of the rivalries that divided them during their years here. The rest is floating candles, glitter, flowers, and iridescent balloons that hang in mid-air.

Pansy perks up and waves at someone in the crowd that’s gathered around the buffet table, and she pulls Draco along as they make their way towards a stunning woman in a red dress. “I helped her pick it out,” Pansy says, knowing perfectly well that it’s caught his eye. He recognises Hermione Granger before they reach her and he admits to himself that she was always beautiful. She’s smart and lovely. And Muggle-born. He swallows around the familiar shame he feels at the bigotry that had seemed so natural to him for the first eighteen years of his life. It’s taken him nearly as long to overcome it, and he doesn’t always trust that he has.

“Pansy!” Hermione seems genuinely enthusiastic when they reach her, and she clutches Pansy in a tight hug before holding out a hand for Draco. To his utter shock, she kisses him on the cheek. “Draco, I’m so glad you could come. Pansy tells me you travelled all the way from Finland.”

Draco rocks back on his heels, unsure how to meet the open, friendly look on the face of a woman he treated like shit in school. A woman who was tortured in his home, by his own family. Draco’s natural poise escapes him for a moment, and he has to take a deep breath to recover. “Thank you,” he says, and reminds himself they’re adults and he must use her first name. “Hermione. Thanks for inviting me. It’s a good excuse to come home for a bit, visit my mother.”

“Of course,” she says, and continues to smile. “You look great. I know lots of people will be glad to see you.”

Draco tells himself that there’s no reason to suspect anything she says. There’s no reason for sarcasm or undercurrents. Pansy has assured him that Weasley and Granger genuinely wanted an opportunity for everyone to put the past well behind them, and Draco believes her, even if it’s difficult to get his instinctive distrust to back down.

“Is everything in order?” Pansy asks. “Do you need any help?”

“All set. The food is here, the decorations are up, and the DJ has our set list." 

A set list that consists of mostly 90s Muggle pop. Draco hadn’t interfered when he overheard Pansy discussing the music choices, but he now wishes he had.

“Great. Where’s your husband?”

“Oh, he… had an errand to run,” Hermione says, glancing at Draco and then back to Pansy when she says it. “He’ll be here by nine. He promised.”

Pansy also looks at Draco before smiling at Hermione, and Draco can’t help the direction of his thoughts.


	2. Chapter 2

Harry hurls another quill into the air and watches it sprout wings and fly circles over his head. There are several others aloft already, buzzing and darting around the cabin. The parchment in front of him is blank, and he’s wondering if ten in the morning is too early to give up the day’s attempt at work. His home is nestled at the edge of Maryfield Wood in Banchory, near the southern bank of River Dee, and he’s taken up distance running. Running away from the book he’s supposed to be writing, in fact. It is addictive, though.

He eyes his trainers by the door and thinks maybe he’ll work better after a run. He’s warded a thousand acres around his cabin, property he purchased from a wizarding family in Aberdeen. The protected paths through fields, woods, and along the riverside are the only reason he gets out of bed these days, and he’s tired enough to think some exercise is what he needs. The solstice was not two weeks ago and Harry’s having trouble sleeping through the sunlight that lingers into the night and reappears in the small hours of the morning.

It’s convenient that Harry’s dressed in the shorts and short-sleeves he slept in and hasn’t eaten yet. It means all he has to do is stretch, which he does hastily, lace up his trainers, and he’s on his way. The day is bright and Harry sets off at a decent pace, his strides bringing his heart rate up and helping him shake the grogginess of a poor night’s sleep. It’s been unseasonably dry this spring and Harry is grateful for the sun on his skin as he makes his way along a dirt path that borders the river. He knows he doesn’t look well, and only cares because of the inevitable flack he’ll get for his appearance the next time his agent comes to visit. Wanda is one to fuss, and the combination of his wan looks and lack of words on the page is likely to earn him another plea that he allow his publisher to hire a ghostwriter. The thought of spilling his life story to a stranger and trusting that stranger to tell it makes his gut lurch. He has to force himself to relax so he doesn’t get a stitch. 

Harry doesn’t time his runs. Instead, he’s spelled his shoes to count miles and they buzz when he hits six, so that he knows it’s time to turn back if he hasn’t already. He learned the hard way that the meandering paths throughout his property can wear him down if he doesn’t watch his distance.

Running has given him the gift of this land, forcing him to appreciate the rhythm of the seasons in a way he hasn’t done since he left Hogwarts for London. He’s also had to learn to dodge tourists who flock to Deeside for the castles and the river itself. He can bear the tourists, in fact. He isn’t hiding from Muggles. Strictly speaking, he’s not hiding from anyone, simply taking some time alone to write his book. He knows that’s not what his friends think, and he’s not sure anymore what he's doing as he slips further out of touch with the people he loves.

Harry’s trainers buzz just as he’s contemplating turning away from the river and towards the woods on a path that will swing back to his cabin. Satisfied that he’s paced himself perfectly, he puts on speed as he tackles the incline ahead of him. He feels the extra exertion under the weight of his exhaustion, but it wakes him completely and he resolves that tonight is the night he’ll cast Nox and try for a better sleep. He keeps meaning to do it and then night rolls around and he allows guilt over his poor progress on the book to compel him to make the most of the summer light. Not that he’s made much of it, other than extra hours to experiment with flying quills and drafting replies to Hermione and Ron’s endless owls.

Even as he has the thought, he feels the wards on his property vibrate with an arrival. There are very few people the wards will allow near his wood cabin, so he knows who he’ll find when he crests the final hill above his home. He doesn’t rush and he doesn’t slow, but concentrates on maintaining the pace he wants, fighting anxiety over the inevitable argument ahead. He should have known they’d show up today.

When he gets his first glimpse from a distance, he can make out Ron’s tall figure reclined on his front porch step, and Hermione standing a few feet into the drive with her hand a visor at her brow against the sun. She’s looking for him, clearly, while Ron says something to her back. Probably telling her to chill out. Harry’s anxiety lessens at the sight of them, and he’s glad despite himself. He hasn’t seen either of them for months, and as difficult as it is sometimes to deal with their worry over him, he does miss them. He’s jogged fairly close by the time they both turn and see him. Hermione waves and calls. Ron lifts his chin, shoves his hands in his pockets, and gets to his feet.

He stops when he reaches them and paces in a circle, sweat drenching his back and chest. When the stitch he’d tried to avoid pinches his side, he bends over and puts his hands on his knees, catching his breath.

“Harry, what are you doing?”

Harry breathes heavily for a few more seconds and looks up at Hermione, drops of sweat falling into his eyes. He’d thought it silly to waste time and money with the healer who perfected his eyesight years ago, but now that he runs he’s glad not to need glasses to see. “What does it look like?”

“Running yourself into the ground is what it looks like.”

“’Mione,” Ron says. “Maybe not first thing?”

Hermione whips her attention to her husband. “When is a good time, then, Ron? Should we wait another six months and hope Harry’s eaten something then?”

Harry has straightened up now, dreading this confrontation. He loves his friends, but this is one of the reasons he has to stay away. “’Mione,” he says, getting his voice back as he gets his breath back, “please don’t. I’m okay.”

Hermione drops her arms from where she held them above her head in exasperation. “No, Harry. No you’re not.”

Harry steps closer and nods. “Maybe I’m not. But I’m also not your responsibility.”

“Merlin, Harry. I know that. You’re my friend. Our friend.”

Ron takes Hermione’s hand and waves in the direction of the front door. “Can we come in?” 

Harry notices a large, white box on the porch against his front door, and has a sinking feeling he knows what it contains. “You can come in if you promise that box isn’t what I think it is.”

“You know what day it is, Harry. I know you do.” Hermione says. And it’s true. He does. He has a tendency to lose time, but she’s made sure to remind him frequently. “Can we sit down and have a cup of tea, at least? If you really won’t come with us, we’ll leave when you want us to.”

Harry isn’t going to ask his best friends to leave, so they follow him into the cabin. He grabs his wand off the shelf by the door to spell the quills out of the air. He doesn’t need his wand to do it because his magic is a constant pulse beating through him. Sometimes he wonders if it’s the only thing keeping him alive. He tries to remember to use his wand, though, even for something as simple as this, so he stays in the habit. Whatever it takes to avoid answering questions. Hermione and Ron don’t startle at the sound of quills _thunking _on the wood floor. They’ve visited before.

“How’s the book—”

Hermione elbows Ron to stop him speaking. Harry answers anyway. “It’s not. I’m not a writer, which isn’t a surprise to either of you.”

“You don’t need the money, Harry,” Hermione says, for what must be the hundredth time. “Your publisher might cry, but that’s the worst that would happen if you changed your mind.”

His friends have never understood why he took the advance to write an autobiography. He gives them the same reason each time they have this conversation, and it isn’t devoid of truth. “If I don’t write it, someone else will. That would be worse.”

He’s not sure anything could be worse than wallowing in memories he’d rather forget, and also can’t get on the page, for well over a year now, but it sounds good. And he does dread the biographies they’ll write about him, whether he ever finishes this damn book or not. The real reason, though, is that he needed an excuse to leave London and to be alone. London was killing him, and the next time he dies he wants to be somewhere far from people who depend on him.

His friends follow him into his cosy kitchen and he sets about brewing the tea. It’s comforting to know how they take it, a friendship marker that endures even as he drifts from them. Ron drinks more milk than tea with loads of sugar, and Hermione takes hers with just a splash of milk. These days Harry’s tea is black, the only way he gets through his day. When they’re seated around his table, he waves a hand at Hermione. “Go ahead, then.”

It’s Ron who speaks up first. “This was my idea, you know.”

“Hermione keeps saying, but I still don’t get it.”

“We had Christmas dinner at ‘Mione’s parents’ this year. Her dad had just been to his fortieth reunion.”

As if that explains anything. “I thought only Americans did that.”

Ron laughs. “No idea, mate.”

“Americans are more vigorous about the tradition and make tasteless movies about it. But some Sixth Form classes keep it up for years.”

Ron kicks Hermione under the table. “Thank you, dear.” The smile Ron gives his wife is something Harry will never fail to envy. “As I was saying, Hermione’s dad was dreading it, but her mum talked him into it. She thought it would help him to fill some holes in his memory.” Hermione’s parents finally began to respond to treatment by a memory healer about five years ago, and while there are still gaps, they’ve recovered the most important bits. Hermione and Ron spend more time with them now. “He said it was an amazing experience. He hadn’t seen most of his class in decades, and he was soft about how much they’d all changed. It made me think, maybe it’s time we find out what happened to our lot. We can’t have turned out worse than where we started.”

Harry wonders about that. They’d never been bad kids. Apart from the Slytherin crowd. Just desperate to stay alive. “We fought a war. We weren’t even all on the same side.”

“That’s the point, Harry,” Hermione says. “It took me a bit to warm up to the idea, but then I thought about the few Slytherins I know, about Pansy and Millicent. They’re not the same horrid people. They grew up.”

Harry immediately thinks of the one Slytherin in particular who still occupies too much space in his brain, especially now that he’s mucking around in the past in an attempt to arrange it into autobiographical form. Malfoy had changed already by the end of the war. Harry is sure of that, or he wouldn’t have testified at his trial. He’s studiously avoided asking about Draco Malfoy over the years, even though he knows Hermione works with Pansy in the Department of Labour, and Pansy likely knows what happened to him. When Harry lived in London, when he still thought he wanted to be an Auror, he’d occasionally run into Pansy at the Ministry, but he’d never asked her, just as he’s never asked Hermione. It’s likely even Ron knows what happened to Malfoy, but he’s never offered the information. 

“If everyone has grown up and moved on, why drag us all back? Isn’t it better we get on with the moving forward bit?”

Ron shrugs and looks at Hermione. “We’ve grown up,” she says. “We’ve moved on. But there are still wounds. All the people we lost.” She takes Ron’s hand across the table. He knows Ron thinks first of Fred. Sirius will always be the person Harry thinks of first when reminded of what he’s lost. “A reunion isn’t magic. It won’t change anything. It’s just another chance to heal. And it won’t be the same for any of us if you’re not there.”

Harry resents the hell out of Hermione for saying so. The guilt pulls tight around his throat and fuck if he hasn’t been told he was important in ways he never wanted to be more times than are fair for a lifetime, or two in his case. “Fuck,” he says aloud. “I don’t want to do this.”

Ron looks sad when he says it, and Hermione is stricken. 

“Harry—”

“Mate—”

They cut each other off and Harry looks down at the table, not wanting to meet either of their stares. He takes a deep breath and beats back the resentment. These are his closest friends, and they’ve made sacrifices too. He’s going to lie a little bit, for them. “It’s okay. I’ll go. It won’t be so bad. I’ll get plastered and have ill-advised sex with someone I don’t even remember. Isn’t that what happens in the movies?” He’s going for light humour, but when he looks up, neither of his friends is smiling.

“I’m sorry,” Hermione says.

“It shouldn’t be torture, Harry,” Ron says. “I miss you. That’s all. I want you to be there, but not if it’ll make you miserable.”

Harry feels like he might cry, and that’s too much. He pushes back his chair, feet scraping the floor, and stands. “I’m not wearing robes.”

That gets a smile from Hermione, who points behind her at the box they’ve left by the door. “It’s a suit. Our clothes are in there, too.” 

____________________ 

Harry showers and dresses in jeans, then shows Ron and Hermione his favourite spots on the land around him, taking them to the river. He feels better than he has in weeks, walking in the sun with his friends. He rather likes playing tour guide, too, when the sights are dell and stream instead of the Muggle tourist traps around London he’d once spent a day showing to Arthur. “The salmon spawn not far from here,” he says, as they walk the river’s edge. They wave to a fly-fisher wading from the opposite bank, and Ron and Hermione are attentive listeners as he tells them everything he’s learned about fly-fishing since he’s moved to Banchory, though he hasn’t actually tried it himself. He’s not sure why, but it feels too committed, to purchase a rod and waders and cast a line across the water. He runs by the river every day and he contemplates it, but he doesn’t feel ready to insert himself so firmly into the scene.

Harry’s glad he got food in this week. He takes his time in the early evening preparing pasta puttanesca for his friends, one of the few things he does with little magical aid. It’s the first solid meal he’s had in a good while, and he’s feeling full after less than half a plate. He’s also sleepy, but the sort of sleepy that’s well earned rather than the result of weeks of sleeplessness.

“Do you have coffee, mate?” Ron says, eyeing Harry over his own empty plate.

Harry shakes himself alert. “Somewhere. Shall I make some?”

“You look like you need it.”

“Oh.” He does, it’s true. If he’s going to go through with this. It’s just after seven o’clock and Hermione is getting antsy as Harry locates the coffee grounds and unearths the French press from the cupboard.

It occurs to him as he makes the coffee that he’d told Teddy he wouldn’t be at the reunion. He hasn’t seen the boy since the previous summer. “Will Teddy be there tonight?”

Hermione studies Harry for a moment before responding, as though she’s looking for the best way to respond without telling him he’s an idiot, because of course Teddy will be at Hogwarts. “The students have been asked to remain in their dormitories. But those with family who stay on in Hogsmeade will have a chance to visit tomorrow. Teddy would love to see you, I’m sure.”

It isn’t that Hermione is wrong, precisely. But Harry knows enough about being raised by people stingy with their love to know he’s done the right thing in distancing himself. Andromeda has loved the boy as her own. And Narcissa Malfoy, of all people, has been devoted to Teddy since he was two or three, when she reconciled with her sister. He hates letting people down. He hates letting Hermione down most of all. But the thought of a weekend away is crippling. “I don’t think I can stay on,” he says.

Hermione doesn’t scold. She nods and excuses herself from the table, retrieving the large box they’ve left by the door. She lifts a miniature garment bag out of it, casts Engorgio, and takes herself to Harry’s bathroom to dress. Ron and Harry wait for the coffee to brew. Harry is dying to ask who will be at this damn reunion, about a certain archnemesis, now that he’s agreed to go, but there’s no way he’s going to give in to the temptation. He’ll have his answer soon enough.

Instead, he lets Ron catch him up on the family. He and Ginny write occasionally, but they haven’t been close for years. She married a Ravenclaw named Clive from a class almost a decade ahead of theirs, someone she met as an opponent on the Quidditch pitch first, and who manages her career now. Ron tells him that Ginny’s thinking of starting a family. Ron and Hermione’s kids are two of Harry’s favourite people, and he regrets that he’s let so much time pass without more than a firecall. Rose will be starting at Hogwarts the year after next, and sometimes Harry wonders if Ron and Hermione got into the parenting business too soon, or if maybe he’s the one who’s stalled. It isn’t that his best friends aren’t marvellous parents, it’s simply that Harry can’t imagine being settled in the way they’ve been for more than a decade now.

“Is Hugo still collecting dragons?” Harry asks. Charlie instigated the hobby over Hermione’s objection when Hugo was still a toddler, gifting him with several enchanted dragon figurines he’d picked up in Russia. Since then, Hugo’s collection has grown, and the boy is infatuated with the menacing toys. The little things breathe tiny bursts of fire and sometimes take flight in the middle of the night. Harry’s pretty sure that Ron has brought at least a few of them into the house himself, but he’s never admitted it, not even to Harry. 

Before Ron can answer, Hermione steps out of the bathroom and Ron’s attention is lost to his wife. She’s gorgeous in a red silk wrap dress that Harry thinks is closer to formal than advertised on the invitation he was sent more than a dozen times over the past few months. As much as he’s tried to ignore it, he knows very well what’s happening tonight. Semi-formal, the invitation had said.

“Don’t!” Hermione says, before Harry can open his mouth. “Pansy picked it out. She said it was important not to underdress, as one of the event’s hosts. We’ve packed a linen suit for you that’s entirely appropriate, and Ron’s got the robes he wears for Ministry dinners. I don’t want to hear a word about any of it. I’m leaving. You have until nine o’clock before I come back for you.”

Officious Hermione emerges when she’s nervous, and Harry has missed her. He’s not quite sure what she’s nervous about, but then he supposes he’s not the only one with trepidations about confronting the Hogwarts class of 1998. Not to mention that her name’s on the invitation.

Ron goes to her, gives her a lingering kiss before walking her to the door. Security at Hogwarts is a bit lax these days, and Hermione managed to make arrangements to allow all of the invitees to Apparate to Hogwarts’ front doors, where Minerva will be there to welcome them into the Great Hall.

After they follow Hermione to the yard and watch her disappear in her silk finest, Harry retrieves the coffee and they sit on his porch steps, letting the meal settle and listening to the evening birdsong. He succumbs to the urge to probe after who to expect tonight, but Ron doesn’t ever give him an opening to ask after the Slytherins. Instead, he tells him that their old friends are showing up in full force. Seamus and Neville. Luna, Parvati, and Dean.

“Oh, and even though she’s not our class, Cho will be there, with Michael,” Ron adds, and Harry wonders if Ron is deliberately trying to distract him from thinking about the one person he must know is on Harry’s mind. Not to mention that even though Harry came out years ago, Ron knows Harry feels awkward about his tepid romances back at school. Ginny and the rest of the Weasley clan have had time to come to terms with the fact that Harry has more chemistry with the randoms he’s sucked off in the gents’ at various establishments around London than he did with any of the girls he’d fancied at Hogwarts. He feels like he should have known, though, and he wonders sometimes if Cho knew, or Ginny. Sometimes he even convinces himself he knew, that on some level he must have known. That his feelings for Cedric were more than hero-worship; that as much as he loathed Malfoy, his infatuation was tinged with something else entirely. But it feels revisionist, and in the end it doesn’t matter. He knows himself now, or at least that part of himself.

Soon it’s time to dress, and Harry restores the suit from the box to its natural size, wondering how likely it is that it’ll fit. It’s one of his own. Dark blue. Ron and Hermione have access to his flat in Camden, which sits gathering dust along with most of his wardrobe, and they have picked well. He’s never enjoyed dressing up, but he always liked this suit. He expects it to fall off him and experiences a sinking feeling at the thought of the eyes that will be on his gaunt figure at the reunion. He knows he’s too skinny.

So he’s grateful when he pulls up the trousers and they’re tight over his thighs and rear thanks to the muscle he’s put on from running, despite needing to put a new notch in his belt to cinch them at the waist. The coat is hopelessly large in the shoulders, and he tries to salvage the look by pairing it with a tight cotton long-sleeved T-shirt underneath. He could spell the suit smaller, but he’s worried he’ll mess up the carefully tailored proportions. It isn’t that he cares much how he looks. He simply doesn’t want to be pitied or gawked at. He contemplates his reflection in his bedroom mirror and decides he made a mistake when he shaved after his shower. His scruff had hidden the sharp angles of his face and complemented the dark circles under his eyes. He does his best to tame his hair and then sulks into the lounge, where Ron is waiting in staid black robes.

Ron’s sartorial choices as an adult are an obvious reaction to the embarrassment he experienced as a child over his mother’s Christmas jumpers, ragged hand-me-downs, and the ancient robes he’d had inflicted on him. Harry never mentions it.

“You look dignified, Ron.” His friend has grown into a truly decent man. A husband, a father, an Auror. He hasn’t lost his humour and he’s as loyal a friend as Harry could ever wish for, but he’s also unmistakably adult.

Ron smirks in response. “You look like a waifish movie star. I see ill-advised sex in your immediate future.”

Harry laughs and secretly hopes he can get through the night without making a drunken arse of himself. He doesn’t drink much these days and he’s vibrating with nerves. Combined with the lack of sleep and nourishment, the night is a recipe for alcohol-fuelled disaster.

“It’s almost nine. We should go before Hermione comes to get us,” Harry says, psyching himself up to face the reunion he swore he’d attend over his twice-dead body.

“We’re fashionably late.” Ron says, leading the way out the front door and down the steps into the yard. “You know where you’re going? I won’t force you to Side-Along if you promise to get yourself there.”

Instead of answering, Harry takes a deep breath and Apparates to Hogwarts, before he can have second thoughts.

Ron is beside him almost as soon as he sets foot on the Hogwarts courtyard. They’re alone, the event having started an hour ago. He expected other stragglers, or Minerva, but she must have given up on them and gone in to enjoy the party. Harry looks to Ron for some wisdom and instead sees nervousness on his friend’s face. Of course, Harry reminds himself again, he isn’t alone in finding this stressful. “This was your stupid idea, Ron. Let’s go.”

Looking up at the imposing front doors of Hogwarts, fairy lights hanging in mid-air above them, and lanterns lit already despite the fact it’s not yet dark, Harry experiences a pang of bittersweet nostalgia. He has such mixed emotions about what feels like his first home, but he’s had time to work through them. He stayed on at Hogwarts after the war, for several years. He helped Minerva, Hagrid, and the rest of the faculty rebuild, and took an unofficial role as student counsellor and assistant coach to the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Minerva gently pushed him to return to London and his plans to become an Auror when the last physical signs of the war had been erased from the castle and grounds. Hogwarts had been ready for him to leave before he was.

They enter and make their way to the Great Hall, hearing a song that sounds suspiciously like grunge rock from 1991 pouring out from the open doors of the Hall. Harry is hoping they can slip in without drawing too much attention, but no such luck. As soon as they walk into the Great Hall, heads turn their way, and then others, and within a moment most of the eyes in the Hall are on Ron and Harry. Hermione emerges from a group on the edge of the dance floor that’s been installed in the middle of the Hall, and Harry decides to focus all of his attention on her approaching smile.

When she reaches them, she pecks Ron and takes Harry’s hand. “It’s going to be fun, Harry. Come in and say hi.”

Harry glances around the Hall and has the jarring sensation that he’s in a room full of strangers. He’d kept in touch with at least a handful of his classmates until a few years ago, so he should be able to pick them out of the sea of adults in suits, dresses, and robes filling the hall. Their class is not middle aged yet. Not nearly. But they’re firmly planted in their thirties, and it shows. Finally, his gaze passes over Neville, who he’s seen as recently as two years ago, and he realises it’s Luna next to him, waving. He waves back and lets his eyes travel over the crowd before making a further move into the room.

He begins to focus on a group of people who must be Hufflepuffs, consciously aging the teenagers he sees in his mind’s eye and transposing those faces onto the ones in front of him until they match up. Hannah Abbott and Susan Bones. And there’s Zacharias Smith. He wonders if Zacharias is still an arse. It’s incredible how they’ve aged. Some well, some less so. But there isn’t a spot among them.

Nearby he sees Cho and Michael Corner with the Ravenclaws. She nods at him, gives him a brief smile, and turns back to her friends, reminding Harry that he’s done nothing to nurture connections that once mattered to him.

Finally, he actively seeks out Pansy. He knows he’ll recognise her, and he finds her by the bar in a sleek black dress, standing next to Blaise Zabini, who has grown even more handsome since school. And they’re both talking to a man whose attention has now locked on Harry.

And holy hell, it can’t be.

The man beside Pansy and Blaise looks like a minor Norse god. Almost everything about him is changed. He’s tan, first of all, and his blond hair is tied neatly back at his neck. Instead of the tall, thin rail Harry expected, he fills out a tailored black suit like a Viking, wide in the shoulders and thick in the thighs. Harry swallows. The only thing that hasn’t changed about Draco Malfoy is his penetrating stare, or glare. It’s hard to tell across the room, but the look he’s directing at Harry is intense.


	3. Chapter 3

“You fish for a living, Draco? That’s bloody brilliant,” says Blaise. Blaise is a banker in Paris. He looks handsome as ever, but there’s something stuffy about his demeanour that disappoints Draco. He wants to say something honest about how much he’s learned from the wizards and witches he sails with, or simply how much he’s learned about the sea, but instead he nods and takes another sip of his white wine.

“You’ve travelled a great deal, too, haven’t you, Blaise?” Pansy asks.

Blaise has just launched into his response when Draco’s attention pulls to the entrance of the Hall. He sees Ron Weasley first, his tall, red head unmistakable against black robes. And then the air leaves the room as everyone, including Draco, turns their attention to the man next to Weasley.

Draco spent a couple of months in Los Angeles many years ago. He’s never felt as out of place anywhere as he did there. One night in particular stands out in his memory. He’d found himself at a bar where a Muggle celebrity of the musical variety was throwing himself a birthday party and the place was crawling with Muggle rock stars. Or so Draco was told. They were simply pretty faces to him, and not all of them even that pretty. He was hit on frequently throughout the night in a series of comical come-ons that were so trite he was sure someone was taking the piss. The Muggles who hit on him seemed to mistake him for a celebrity himself. He’s always remembered the young lady who told him he was a ‘stone cold fox’. He wasn’t sure it was a compliment at the time, nor what cold stones and foxes had to do with each other, or with him. She’d laughed at him and put his ignorance down to his accent. She’d thought he was Australian. As if.

Stone cold fox. The words jump to mind when he lays eyes on Harry Potter and all of a sudden their meaning penetrates. He looks deceptively delicate, thin with chiselled features and a lankiness that suggests he grew a bit after Hogwarts. Deceptive, though, because despite something fragile about his appearance, his posture hints at the strength he always had, like there’s iron at his core.

“Someone’s sporting a retro heroin-chic look,” Blaise says, and then resumes telling Pansy about his recent visit to Japan.

Draco watches Granger approach Potter and Weasley and sees Potter’s expression go from guarded to relieved when she reaches them. With his hand clasped in hers, Potter scans the room, watching the groups of people until they slide into place in his mind as they had for Draco.

Draco holds his breath, willing Pansy and Blaise to keep up their conversation without him, and waits for Potter’s eyes to reach his. When they do, he can’t look away, even as he’s caught out staring. The always lurking shame he feels when he thinks of Potter is right at the surface, begging him to remember how ugly he was as a human being, begging him to look in the mirror and ask if he’s still that ugly boy today. And then Potter is looking away, as though to answer the voice in Draco’s head. _Yes, you are still ugly. You’ll always be ugly on the inside. Harry Potter sees it._

Draco finishes his wine in a large swallow and turns to the bar they’re conveniently stationed at to order a Firewhisky. “Drinks?” he asks his companions. He’s determined to spend the night as he’d intended, catching up with erstwhile friends, Pansy and Blaise foremost, but also seeking out Greg and Montague. Perhaps getting a tour of the refurbished Hogwarts. It’s been years since he thought about the castle, but now that he’s in it, he’s reminded of all the ways he’d loved it when he arrived First Year, and all the ways he loathed it by the time he left.

And after more than two months sober on a boat full of drunken wizards and a few witches, Draco has no intention of being the temperate one tonight. He’s not going to regret his decision to come here, even if he has to get drunk to enjoy it.

He forces his attention onto his friends, takes another drink, and then asks Blaise about Paris. It was the first place Draco went after the trials and he’s curious how Blaise finds it.

“The wizarding community is not as insular,” Blaise says. “At least not as insular as England’s was when I left. I admit things have changed here, and I’m not sure I have a handle on how much.”

Draco nods agreement. He’s equally unsure that he knows much of anything about England’s wizarding community anymore.

“Didn’t you say something similar about Finland, Draco?” Pansy asks.

“Yes, though I wouldn’t compare them. Finland doesn’t even have a word for pure-bloods. The French certainly do. It’s simply that the French had to shift their allegiance from the Muggle monarchy to the Muggle proletariat during the Revolution—they did, whether for truly ideological or frankly political reasons is unclear—and the shift created alliances that radically changed the relationship between wizards and Muggles there. 

Blaise punches him lightly in the arm. “So astute, Malfoy,” he says.

Draco isn’t sure whether Blaise is being snide or complimentary. But then, he often wasn’t sure where Blaise was concerned, and the point of this evening is to stay open to the possibility of who they’ve become, so he smiles in return.

“You obviously got a real sense for the French when you were there.”

“You could say that.” Truthfully, Draco had thought Paris beautiful but he’d been such a miserable sod at the time, immediately following his trial, that he couldn’t get far enough away from himself. He’d stayed less than two years. But he’d begun to be interested in comparative wizarding history, and made the beginning of his study there. He hadn’t thought seriously about it until he went to America, after spending time in Greece and the Middle East, and the Caribbean. He has notes and two chapters of a book that will likely never get written, but he isn’t ready to share that with anyone, let alone Blaise Zabini on this night of all nights.

The song changes and Draco has to hold onto the bar when he recognises it. Pansy had been, despite her distaste for nearly all things Muggle, infatuated with the song and played it incessantly during Sixth Year. It was one of the lowest times of Draco’s life, faced with choices he still can’t reckon with. It was the year he nearly became a murderer. It was the year Harry Potter nearly killed him. And somehow Pansy doesn’t recognise how this song, on endless loop in the Slytherin common room that year, makes him feel now because she squeals when she hears it. “The Verve!” she says. “Merlin’s pants, I loved this song.”

Draco takes a slug of his whisky and lets it burn down his throat. It is not 1997. He is not seventeen. He is not that boy anymore. Fuck.

“I’m going to circulate,” Draco says, dodging Pansy’s plea to dance. The song is drippy and the tempo is entirely wrong for dancing. Pansy drags Blaise away, leaving Draco to finish his whisky and consider tackling the room.

It’s been years since he’s been social outside of Finland’s small wizarding community, and even there he doesn’t get off the boats much. When he does, he spends weeks alone in his hut on Lake Niemisjärvet. Akseli had called him ‘Aristokraatii’ when they’d first met, and teased Draco for his fussy manners, which were prissy by Akseli’s standards even after the years he’d spent shaving down his sharpest edges. Nearly five years later, Akseli teases him less. He hasn’t forgotten how to play the part, but it doesn’t come naturally anymore and he’s out of practice.

He orders up another Firewhisky and scans the Hall for someone suitable to talk to. He forces his eyes past the tight knot of mostly Gryffindors and a few Ravenclaws who have pressed around Potter. The group is a shrine to Draco’s sins. Lovegood, Granger, Longbottom. He feels queasy.

That’s when he sees Gregory Goyle. At least, he thinks that’s who he’s watching step onto the dance floor with a woman he doesn’t recognise. She must be his wife or girlfriend. Draco finds himself smiling at the sight. The song is now something decidedly more upbeat and Greg is hamming it up for the crowd around him, elbows and knees at extreme angles as he kicks it up to the anodyne pop. He’d always been a ham, and suddenly Draco remembers that Greg wasn’t only sullen and unimaginative. His friendship with Vince had been built on mutual goofiness more than the animosity they shared for their fellow students. That was there too, but Draco always thought it didn’t go very deep with them. Draco isn’t sure how he’d forgotten that. 

“I don’t suppose we’ll get you out there?”

Draco startles to find Granger at his elbow. “Not likely,” Draco says, noticing he’s managed to sound offended when he’s merely on his backfoot. After Harry Potter, no one is a less welcome reflection on his character than Granger.

“Maybe after a few more drinks?” she says.

He takes another swig of whisky and shrugs.

“Draco?”

He forces himself to look at her. She really is lovely. “Yes?”

“I know you didn’t want to come. Pansy told me she guilted you into it.”

“Guilted.” Ha. As if he needed help with that. “No, that’s not what she did.”

“Pleaded, perhaps?” Draco continues looking at her but isn’t sure he could explain how Pansy persuaded to come if he tried. “Anyhow, I simply wanted to say again that however she got you here, I’m glad you came.”

Draco waits, certain there’s more. There is, of course.

“And…”

“And?”

“Well, now that you’re here, I wonder if you’d…come talk to us? Ron and me? Luna?” She pauses and he knows perfectly well the name she’s dithering over. “Harry?”

“Am I meant to be some sort of group therapy for you all?” Draco swore to himself he wouldn’t snap at anyone tonight, but he hasn’t felt like a novelty since Hogwarts, since his trial, and he’ll be damned if he’s going to let her make him feel that way tonight. 

“No, of course not,” she says. She puts her hand on his arm, just above the faded mark under his suit, and it’s all he can do not to shake it off. “I’m sorry, that isn’t what I meant at all.”

He’s not interested in providing her with a way out, since he’s certain some part of her still hates him. Why wouldn’t she? So he just looks at her, waiting.

“I want to hear what you’ve been up to, genuinely. I think we all do. We’ve all changed, Draco. I think it’s important we have a chance to get a glimpse of how. Not—” She jumps in, before he can interrupt. “—not as though we’re at an exhibit, but as a way of connecting with each other, however briefly.”

It sounds awfully spectator-ish to him. Still, he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t curious. He’s not ashamed of what he does for a living, though he suspects there’ll be sniggers. Granger has a fancy job at the Ministry with Pansy. Weasley’s an Auror. He already knows this. He has no idea what Lovegood is up to. Or Longbottom. And Potter. Pansy says he’s a recluse. By all appearances he doesn’t eat enough. That’s about all Draco knows. “Okay,” he says, still reluctant.

Against his better judgement, he follows Granger away from the bar and over to the group of people he’d expected to avoid all night, watching their expressions change from open, friendly smiles to wide-eyed anticipation as he approaches.

No one greets him. Draco shifts, the collective discomfort prickling his spine. He keeps his eyes on Granger, his unlikely ally, and she makes introductions after a silent beat, as if they don’t all remember him perfectly well. As if he could ever forget them. “You all remember Draco,” she says. They nod obediently.

Longbottom finally holds out his hand. Draco shakes it and takes a good look at the man. He’s matured nicely. He’s Draco’s height and his eyes shine with an intelligence Draco doesn’t recall from Hogwarts. What a sad sack he’d been, hadn’t he? At least, Draco had thought of him that way. He’d likely been wrong.

Lovegood is next. Luna. She’s in a shimmery fall of a dress, flowers woven through it as well as her hair. Her expression is airy as ever, and his stomach turns over, recalling the cruel names he’d called her. Now she calls him by his given name and offers him her hand. The confusion he feels is stunning. “Luna,” he says. Reminding himself again that he must use their first names.

He has to work not to look at Potter, more difficult for the fact that he can feel Potter’s eyes on him. He shakes hands with Weasley—Ron—and again forces himself to confront another assessing look. Weasley is changed, too, though immediately recognisable. Draco had thought him a bad joke, and in this moment all he can think is that Ron Weasley lost a brother and is Harry Potter’s friend. How easily Draco had dismissed him, and how impossible it is to do that now. Weasley’s handshake is brisk. He doesn’t smile. But there’s nothing mean in it either. “Hello, Draco,” is all he says. 

Finally, Draco has no choice but to face Potter. The first thing he notices is that he isn’t wearing specs. Instead, green eyes reflect the bright candlelight and bore into Draco. He’s standing directly across from Draco and holding a drink of his own. “Harry,” Draco says, willing himself not to tremble. 

“Draco,” Harry says, and nods, not offering his hand but taking a swig of his beer. He looks as nervous as Draco feels.

“We were just talking about Luna’s latest book on Wrackspurts,” Longbottom says. Draco dredges his memory for something appropriate to say in return.

“What have you been up to, Draco?” Lovegood asks him, quickly extinguishing any hope he has that he can kill time asking pointless questions about Wrackspurts.

“Most recently, I’ve been in Finland.”

“Oh? Doing what?” Longbottom asks. 

Granger and Weasley are likely to already know the answer. He wonders what Potter knows, but forces himself to look at Longbottom when he speaks. “Fishing. Commercial fishing. Herring in the Baltic, mostly. Some cod and salmon in the North Atlantic and Norwegian Sea.”

There’s a moment of silence and then Longbottom cracks a smile. “Really? Brilliant!”

“Oh?” Draco is well aware how unlikely his current occupation is, but he still wonders how people who’d known him as a teenager will explain their surprise.

“Yes. It is. I always thought you didn’t much like the outdoors,” Granger says, rescuing Longbottom, who looks a bit like a fish as he searches for something else to say.

Draco smiles. “I didn’t, much. It’s grown on me.”

Weasley must have known, but he still looks sceptical. “Do you fish with… Muggles?”

“I have. But no, mostly I sail on wizarding vessels. I learned something about my own limitations sailing with Muggles,” Draco says, unsure why he’s shared that with this group. It could be misunderstood. Well, sod it. They can ask him if they’re curious what he means.

“Limitations?”

Leave it to Granger.

“Physical, mostly. Sailing without magic is gruelling. Finnish wizards don’t use magic to get the fish out of the water, but magic eases the journey. And then it’s much more dangerous to be at sea without magic.”

“I’d wager it’s dangerous even with magic,” Potter says, speaking for the first time. Draco allows himself to look at the man and finds him impossible to read. He wonders if the comment is meant to provoke him to say something foolish.

“It can be. There’s a great deal more power in lightning or a tidal wave at sea than most wizards can manage with their wands.”

Potter blinks and looks lost for words. He watches Draco for an interminable moment and then distracts himself with his beer.

They all stand silent until Granger once again comes to their rescue. “Do you know how to fly-fish, Draco? Harry was telling us all about it this afternoon.”

Harry shoots her a menacing look and Draco works to cover his own surprise. “Do you fish, Harry?” Potter’s name for the second time in his mouth feels foreign. Not unwelcome, but it rolls around in his head even after he’s said it.

“Um, no. I don’t,” Potter says. He’s still looking at Granger like she’s a traitor, but when she doesn’t react, he continues. “I live near the River Dee. I’ve learned a bit talking to the fly-fishers there, but I haven’t tried it myself.”

It’s not lost on Draco that he went to another continent to learn how to fish when he could have done so right here in Scotland fifteen years earlier. He tries to imagine himself at seventeen in waders, instead of moping around the Room of Requirement with a Vanishing Cabinet. It’s so preposterous that he nearly laughs out loud at the thought.

“What’s so funny?” Potter says.

Perhaps he has laughed out loud. “Sorry.” He realises it appears he’s laughed at Potter. “I was just… remembering something. Funny.”

They all look at him as though he’s sprouted a mandrake from his head. Well, fuck. He isn’t about to share his thoughts. He might as well impale himself on their disapproval. It’s possible he has no dignity left. “I was squeamish, when I first tried to fish. Afraid to touch the first fish I caught, if you must know.” It had been worse than that. He cringes inwardly to think about it.

Longbottom and Lovegood have the good graces to chuckle. Weasley and Potter appear suspicious. Granger looks curious, like he’s revealed something other than his own foolishness.

“Tell me about yourselves,” Draco says, desperate to turn the attention away. He doesn’t really want to hear about Wrackspurts, so he turns on Longbottom. “What do you do, Neville?” Merlin, he’d been a shit to this man. He can’t believe they’re standing here having a civil conversation.

“I grow medicinal plants. I supply healers at St. Mungo’s, and all over England,” Longbottom says. “Nothing particularly surprising about where I ended up.”

No, perhaps not. Surprising that Draco looks at him and sees someone who succeeded in following a lifelong passion, though. “You always excelled at herbology,” Draco says, for want of anything more inspired to say. He can’t help but notice that Potter is looking increasingly appalled. What does he want from Draco? Does he expect him to behave better? Or more likely, worse. Draco has a miserable suspicion Potter’s waiting for him to act an arse.

Granger pipes up, because it’s clear now that she’s the peacekeeper in the group. He’s not sure how he never knew this about her. Mostly he remembers she had a mean right hook. And that he loathed her on principle. “Neville saves lives. He’s a hero of sorts.”

Longbottom looks at his feet, and if it weren’t so dim in the Hall, Draco bets he could see signs of a blush. “Not at all, Hermione. You’re all the real heroes.”

Draco has forgotten how much he loathes the Gryffindor “aw-shucks” hero complex. It’s still nauseating fifteen years later. All he needs now is for Potter to give a rousing speech about—

“Let’s not. Please,” Potter says, interrupting Draco’s thoughts. He’s spoken with heat, and he swigs his beer before turning and walking away from the little group towards the entrance to the Hall.

Weasley clears his throat. “I’ll just…”

“No, Ron,” Hermione says. “Let him be. Give him a moment.”

Draco wonders why. Something to do with the recluse business.

“Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about. I read that somewhere,” Lovegood puts in. Longbottom looks dismal for having said the wrong thing, but nods at Lovegood as though she’s shared precious wisdom. 

Draco decides it’s best not to pretend he understands what’s going on and take the direct approach. “Is he okay?” he asks, as politely as he can. “Pansy says he doesn’t get out much.” He genuinely hopes he’s not being offensive. He wants to know, though. Badly.

Hermione shakes her head, like she’s answering the question for herself, and then rearranges her features into something less fretful. “He’s under a lot of pressure. He’s supposed to be writing his autobiography, and he isn’t… enjoying it. Harry’s never liked being cast as the hero, and the book is a reminder that it’s expected of him." 

Draco tries to muster some sympathy, but fails. Potter is likely being paid a king’s ransom to write about his heroics, to the further adoration of the wizarding public, for whom he can already do no wrong. Sounds rough. That old, vicious envy he thought he’d mastered long ago rears its head, and he has to kick it mentally before he can respond. “I see. Maybe he needs a ghostwriter.”

“Oi, don’t let him hear you say that,” Weasley says.

Draco thinks it’s unlikely he’ll ever talk to the man again, so there’s not much danger of repeating the suggestion. Still, it seems an obvious solution. Isn’t that what ghostwriters are for?

“I’ll refrain should the opportunity arise,” Draco says, and notices he sounds like a prig. This lot seem to bring it out in him. This was Weasley’s idiotic idea, wasn’t it? Dragging them all back here so they could learn how they’d turned out? What if all that happens is that they revert to type? Draco sighs. “I’m sorry. I’ll keep that in mind, Weasley. Ron." 

Hermione shoots her husband a look and lets Draco know, “We’ve all suggested a ghostwriter, Draco.” Oh. “It doesn’t go over well. It’s not a bad idea, it’s simply not one he wants to hear.”

Draco may not have known Harry Potter well. Not in any of the ways that count. But one thing he knew then and suspects hasn’t changed is that the boy, the man, was and probably is, insufferably stubborn. It had always rubbed him raw when they were in school together, but now Draco simply sees his own stubbornness reflected back. At least Harry had been stubbornly good.

He thinks someone should go after Potter, despite what Granger says, but it won’t be for him to suggest it.

“I should apologise,” Longbottom says.

That seems silly.

“There’s nothing to apologise for,” Hermione says. “Harry just wants to feel normal, that’s all.”

“Well he isn’t,” Lovegood says, and Draco notices the way they all turn on her as though it’s 1994 and she’s just said Voldemort’s name. “Harry has never been ‘just normal’ and he’s less so now than he was in school.”

Draco wonders what she means by that last comment, but again, it doesn’t seem his place to ask. It’s uncomfortable standing in this circle of close friends while they discuss Potter this way. It feels voyeuristic. He’s searching for some way to excuse himself when two things happen at once.

Lovegood says, “I’ll talk to him.” And just as she does, a Weird Sisters song comes on and Draco watches Weasley and Granger crane their heads in the direction of the dance floor. He wonders what Pansy and Granger could have been thinking with the playlist.

Lovegood makes a quick exit as their little crowd breaks up. The rest of them head for the dance floor where dozens of their former classmates are beginning to move in a way that’s far more self-conscious than Draco remembers them being in school. He lingers on the edge of the crowd, picking Pansy out and watching her hurtle towards Granger and Weasley. Blaise is moving competently next to a woman who Draco realises with a startle must be Millie. 

On the far side of the dance floor, he watches McGonagall swaying next to Professors Sprout and Flitwick. They wear varying expressions of bemusement as they watch their former students dance to a song that almost qualifies as an “oldie.” Draco wonders whether any of them thought this as poor an idea as he had originally. It seems nearly the entire class of 1998 has shown up, whether they had reservations about the idea or not.

He’s still inclined to question his wisdom in coming, but then he’s also still spinning from the conversation he’s just had with classmates who’d all nearly died in a war. He’d been on the wrong side of that war, and nothing he did in the end, nothing Potter said at his trial, changes that fact. He turns and does another scan of the hall but sees no sign of Potter or Lovegood.

Draco is contemplating another stiff drink, or Apparating back to his mother’s townhouse, when his former minion detaches from the crowd and makes his way to Draco.

When he arrives, his old friend slaps him on the back rather than going in for a hug, and Draco is grateful for small favours. “You look like a fish out of water, Draco,” Greg says, and it’s clear the pun is intentional.

“I suppose I am. How are you, Greg?”

Greg Goyle beams at him, and while he’d been simple-minded and simply mean, his smile now is simply free. Voldemort’s death set a lot of people free. “Smashing. Good. And you?”

“I’m well,” Draco says. He’s almost desperate to say something to connect him to this man suddenly. He’s not sure why. “It’s been a long time, Greg. I do feel out of place.”

“It makes sense. You left,” Greg says. Simply.

“A long time ago.” Greg hasn’t ever left. Draco hasn’t known for sure. Hasn’t ever asked after Greg. But he sees it in the way the man in front of him holds himself. He’s home.

“My daughter’s in her first year at Hogwarts. She’ll be home for break in a few weeks.”

Incredible, Draco thinks. He’s a father. “How is that possible, Greg? We’ve barely been out long enough.”

“I met Jenna, my wife, right after the war. I don’t know why we were in such a rush, but no regrets.”

“Will you see her? Your daughter?” Draco appreciates that Hogwarts’ current inmates must be dying to watch this odd affair. To get a glimpse into their own future. To get a glimpse of Harry Potter, no doubt.

“We’re staying in Hogsmeade. We’ll take her out tomorrow,” Greg says, waving a hand in the air to indicate all the wonder of having a child and spending time with her after a long separation. “Are you staying on? Maybe you can meet her?”

Draco and Pansy have a reservation in Hogsmeade, but Draco has made Pansy promise that he can return to London tonight if he doesn’t feel up to staying, and he’s nearly certain he plans to leave. Shortly. “I’m afraid not,” he says. “I need to spend some time with Narcissa.”

Greg’s smile is as approving as Eetu’s would be, Draco imagines. “Send my regards, will you?" 

“Of course.”

____________________

An hour later, Draco has been admirably social, making small talk with classmates from all the houses. He’s downed a couple more firewhiskies. And he’s tried and utterly failed not to watch Harry Potter’s every move.

Potter returned with Lovegood not long after he disappeared, and from Draco’s observation has managed to make the transition from beer to whisky with commendable dedication. Even hanging around the edges of the Hall, Potter’s been swamped with admirers, and he looks more uncomfortable than Draco feels. In school, he’d always seemed to absorb the attention gleefully. Draco wonders how things could have changed so drastically, or whether he’s been as mistaken about that as he’s been about almost everything else.

Every so often, Draco could swear that he’s caught Potter staring back at him, but he tells himself he’s imagining it. And if Potter is watching him, it’s likely because he expects Draco to do something appalling. He tears his eyes away from Potter’s current conversation with McGonagall, with the intention of seeking out Pansy, only to find her at his elbow.

“Have we had enough?” he asks, hoping she’ll agree to an early exit. She’d said they could leave when he was ready.

“I think not, Draco.” She holds up a hand to stave off his protest. “I know, I promised. But every time I look around to see what you’re up to, you’re watching Harry. Even when you’re talking to someone else. This may be your only chance to satisfy your curiosity, so go talk to him.”

Is it curiosity? He’s not certain. He thinks maybe it’s self-flagellation. Maybe it’s bitterness. Maybe it’s that he owes the man his life and sometimes he thinks it’s the shame of that fact alone that drove him out of England. Or perhaps it’s the man’s disturbingly tight arse in that suit. Simple attraction would be an easier burden to bear, and easier to ignore as well. “I’ve already tried talking to him. He walked away.”

“Because of something you said?”

Draco sighs. If Pansy forces him to make rational excuses for avoiding the one man in the room he’s dying to talk to, he’s going back to Finland immediately.

“I didn’t think so,” she says. “Look, Draco. There’s no correct thing to do. He’s here. You’re here. Neither of you wanted to come. I notice him watching you just as surely as you’re watching him. Talk to him or don’t. But if you choose not to, I hope you’ll remember in the future that you had a chance and decided you have nothing to say to him.”

Draco looks over Pansy’s shoulder and catches Potter’s eye in that precise moment. They stare at each other through the dim light and across the room, and Draco feels sweat beading in the small of his back. He hates to admit it, but if he’s honest with himself, he knows he’ll always regret not grasping this chance. “Okay,” he says, not looking away from Potter.

Instead, he gives Pansy’s elbow a squeeze as he makes his way past her and walks across the Hall to Potter. McGonagall is drifting away as he nears, and Potter’s expression gives nothing away at his approach.


	4. Chapter 4

Harry isn’t sure which emotion he feels more powerfully as he watches Malfoy walking towards him, anxiety or relief. There are so many ways Harry has failed over the years. Failing to find it in himself to talk civilly to Draco Malfoy ranks up there among those failures he most regrets, however small it is in the grander scheme. But his classmates’ magnanimity in the face of his own detachment is suffocating, just as he finds nearly everyone’s kindness towards him suffocating these days. Malfoy is perhaps the one person in this room who won’t be looking to make Harry Potter feel good about himself. The Malfoy he remembers had many deplorable traits—cowardice, snobbishness, bigotry. Harry assumes Malfoy has shed some or even most of these, given the very little he’s learned about him tonight. He desperately hopes that the imposing figure now standing in front of him is still selfish at his core. Harry couldn’t quite say why, but he craves meeting someone else’s selfish desires. Desires? Harry scolds himself at the thought. But, Merlin, he is so tired of being accommodated.

He’s also gloriously drunk, he realises at the moment that Malfoy’s grey eyes swim into focus. 

“Potter.” Malfoy clears his throat. “Harry.” 

Harry forces the man’s name out, noticing how satisfying the hard syllable is in the back of his throat. “Draco.” 

He must sway because all of a sudden there’s a warm hand on his arm, the grip firm and steadying. “Should you sit?”

He strains to hear sarcasm or derision in Malfoy’s tone, but can’t find it. Oh, shit, Harry thinks. Please, please don’t be kind. “I’m fine,” he says, and straightens himself out of the other man’s grasp. He mutters a sobering charm under his breath, just enough to dispel any outward appearance of drunkenness.

“What was that?” Malfoy asks, assessing Harry as though he’s noticed the change in Harry’s posture and renewed clearness to his eyes.

“Can we get some air?” Harry says, changing the subject. He’s surprised at himself, but the alcohol is still coursing through him and he did set out to do something ill-advised tonight. He can’t imagine anything more ill-advised than Draco Malfoy. Gods, please be a selfish git, Harry thinks.

Malfoy is stock still for a moment, watching Harry as though he’s waiting for a punch line, or for Harry to collapse in a drunken swoon. “I suppose,” he says, finally.

They leave the Hall together, side by side. Harry pointedly doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes, certain they’re being watched by at least half the Hogwarts class of 1998. Harry keeps walking until they meet the large doors that let them out into the central courtyard. Malfoy doesn’t hesitate to follow him outside, and they continue in silence through the courtyard and down the side lawn, away from the penumbra of lights, into the dark surrounding the lake. Malfoy’s unspeaking presence by his side gives him no clues to his companion’s frame of mind. Something about the dark lake pulls at him, though. He almost forgets and lights their way without his wand. Luckily, Malfoy pulls out his own and casts Lumos before Harry can invite more questions. Harry glances over at the familiar hawthorn wand and wonders if it remembers him.

“Did I ever say thank you for returning it?” Malfoy asks into the quiet night. “My wand.”

“No. Please don’t now, either.” It’s unfair, perhaps, but Harry won’t be able to stand it if Malfoy is looking for forgiveness from him. It isn’t that Harry hasn’t forgiven him, rather that Harry is sick of carrying around other people’s expectation that what he thinks about them matters more than what they think about themselves. If Malfoy is burdened with guilt about the past, that’s his problem, not Harry’s. He assumes apologies from Draco Malfoy are all form over substance anyway.

“Okay,” Malfoy says. “May I ask where we’re going, then?”

“Can you teach me to fish?” It wasn’t what Harry had in mind, not that he has anything clearly in mind. Something low in his gut insists fishing is not it, though. He’s not sure where the idea has sprung from, but he would like to learn, and there’s a lake, and he’s walking beside a professional fisherman.

“Have you got a rod?”

They reach the edge of the lake. Malfoy lifts his wand and sends a string of lights out over the water, shimmering not far from the shore so that the water reflects black and gold before them.

“I’d bet Hagrid has one or two in his hut, but I’d rather not break in while he’s away.” Harry knew Hagrid wouldn’t be here tonight, but it’s still a disappointment to be at Hogwarts without him. Harry had an owl from Hagrid not long after he received Hermione’s first invitation to the reunion saying he was sorry he’d miss it, but he had plans to be in France. “There must be something we could transfigure.”

Even as he says it, Harry feels bone-deep exhaustion at the thought of the patience he’d need to spend the next hour fishing. There’s something else he wants from Malfoy, and it isn’t instruction. His magic is buzzing under his skin, even louder than usual, begging him to ask for what he really wants.

Harry turns to look at the man and finds he’s being watched as well. Malfoy’s eyes are dark in the night, but the planes of his face are limned with light, and Harry can feel his heartbeat speed as he contemplates the strength in Malfoy’s shoulders and in his solid stance. “Is that why we’re here?” Malfoy says. “To fish?”

“No, perhaps not.” Harry takes a step closer and reaches out to put a hand on Malfoy’s hip, under his suit jacket, but Malfoy takes a step back, leaving him grasping air.

“What exactly is it we’re here for, then?” Malfoy doesn’t look angry. He doesn’t even look confused. More like he’s double-checking.

Harry isn’t shy about sex with strangers. But he hasn’t had sex with anyone who’s more than an acquaintance in years, and Draco Malfoy is somewhat more than an acquaintance. And also a complete stranger. He doesn’t know for certain whether Malfoy is attracted to men, though he would bet on it. Harry certainly has no reason to suspect Malfoy is harbouring a long-held attraction for him, but then the man has been watching him all night.

Harry’s need is strong in this moment. He’s already decided to gamble that Malfoy is selfish enough not to worry about the finer points of Harry’s feelings. Malfoy will happily reject Harry if this isn’t what he wants. Harry is counting on that. And he’ll take what Harry is offering without compunction if it is. Harry’s counting on that as well.

“I didn’t want to come here tonight. I was hoping I might at least get a shag out of it.”

Malfoy swallows and looks down at Harry with intent. His expression might be angry now, and Harry almost takes a step back, thinking he’s miscalculated. “What makes you think you’ll get that from me?”

“No deep thinking involved,” Harry says, refusing to be intimidated. He will not get sweaty palms over this man, no matter how fucking enormous he’s grown or how gorgeous he looks in that suit. “You were watching me. You approached me. I’m hoping you’re interested, that’s all. And that I might be able to offer you something in return.”

“How… transactional,” Malfoy says, but he moves a fraction closer, and this time he puts his hand heavily on Harry’s waist. The moment the touch lands, Harry’s body sings with electric energy. “What, precisely, are you offering?”

Harry doesn’t want to sound as desperate as he feels, or come across some horrible cliché, but what he wants is simple, and clichéd. “Use me. I want to be used.”

Malfoy rears back, but his hand tightens around Harry’s waist. “Christ, are you…?” He looks like he’s collecting his thoughts. “You’re drunk,” he concludes.

Truthfully, Harry is drunk. But his sobering charm should hide any outward traces of it and he didn’t need a drop of firewhisky to be certain of what he wants. It’s been so long, and even casual sex has started to feel laden with responsibilities. If there’s one person he could fuck, who could fuck him, and not leave him feeling sorry, it’s Draco Malfoy. “I’m not. Swear. Just incredibly horny.”

“Again, why me?”

Harry imagines Malfoy doesn’t want to hear that Harry trusts him to take what he wants, no more and no less. Instead he tells him something else that’s true. “You’re hot. And you’re here. I want you to fuck me.” As he says it, he steps in again, leaning into Malfoy’s hand, tilting his head up so they’re a hair’s breadth from breathing the same air. 

“Paska,” Malfoy rasps out, and wraps his free hand around Harry’s nape, digging his fingers in and sending a shivering sensation over Harry’s scalp and down his spine.

“What?” Harry asks, not really caring what the word means. He doesn’t wait for a response. Instead he leans up, giving Malfoy time to pull away, and sucks Malfoy’s thick bottom lip into his mouth.

“Mmm,” is Malfoy’s only response, and he pulls Harry to him, opening his mouth to a deep, searching kiss that leaves Harry dizzy with arousal. He presses into Malfoy’s solid mass and relishes the feeling of strong arms sliding around him, holding him as Harry nips at Malfoy’s jaw and down his neck.

Harry gets hard so quickly he isn’t sure this is going to last long enough for Malfoy to get inside him, and he wants that even more than the delicious heat of Malfoy’s broad chest on his. Malfoy’s hand slides down over Harry’s arse and Harry hitches a leg around his hip, grinding his erection into Malfoy’s broad thigh, feeling Malfoy’s responding hardness pressed down Malfoy’s leg. Harry groans, high from the loss of blood to his brain and hornier than he remembers being in an age.

He tugs Malfoy in a downward direction and tries to get them on the ground without words, but Malfoy resists, reaching under Harry with both hands and lifting him so that Harry has to wrap his legs tight around Malfoy. “Fuck, Mal— Draco,” Harry has to stop thinking of him as Malfoy. “Draco. Please,” Harry says into the soft skin of Draco’s earlobe, licking the edge of it while he’s there, enjoying the shiver that runs through Draco when he does. Harry is struggling to rein in his magic’s pulse, which is likely to knock them both to the ground if he’s not careful.

Draco sucks in a hissing breath and then starts to walk Harry away from the lake’s edge. Harry’s about to protest, but it’s only a handful of long strides before Harry’s back hits the broad trunk of a tree.

Harry gasps at the impact and pulls Draco in for a kiss when it looks like he’s going to check on Harry’s well-being. The less they speak, the better. He can’t remember ever wanting someone as badly as he wants this man right now, and words can only ruin that. Draco’s tongue licks into Harry’s mouth and his teeth bite at Harry’s top and then bottom lip. Harry can only whimper in return, the soft, sweet, kneading pressure of Draco’s lips and the pressure on his trapped erection sinking him deeper into his body, until he’s nothing but sensation. He needs their clothes gone, now, and he’s too lost in the heat of Draco’s body and the salty smell of his skin to process what he’s done before both of them are stark naked against the tree. 

“What the..?” Draco says into his mouth.

“Don’t stop. Don’t stop.” The rough bark of the tree scrapes against Harry’s skin and the sting of it only heightens the pleasure gathering in his gut and in his groin.

“Your back.”

“Feels good, don’t stop,” Harry says, kissing into Draco’s mouth and grinding down on Draco’s cock, which is now pressed awkwardly behind Harry’s balls. “Inside me, fuck me.”

Both of Draco’s hands are around his arse. Harry’s cheeks are spread with his legs around Draco, and Draco probes with one thick finger into Harry’s hole. “Merlin. Fuck.”

Harry’s already cleaned himself, slicked himself. He thought it and it was done. There’s nothing between them and a shag. “I’m ready. Promise. Anything, Draco. Just do it.”

Draco looks into Harry’s eyes, searching, and Harry’s heart races. He’s terrified by the depth of what he sees in Draco’s expression, but he forces himself to face it. It’s just sex. Draco drops his head to Harry’s shoulder then, as though he’s fighting a moment of indecision. _Gods, please, just take me. _“Draco, please,” Harry whines.

Draco takes a few heaving breaths and then reaches between them to stroke his long, thick cock. He positions himself to thrust into Harry, but he doesn’t thrust. Instead, he wraps his arms around the small of Harry’s back, protecting him from the bark of the tree, and pulls the two of them together, entering him, stretching him, with an excruciating slowness that forces Harry to notice every sensation. Draco is big and Harry hasn’t done this in an age, but the fullness is incredible. His eyes sting with relief at being filled, with the unfettered joy of it, disconnected from anything but sweaty skin on sweaty skin, with nothing to see but the dark nubs of Draco’s nipples and the rapid rise and fall of that muscled chest. Harry searches for a scar there, some sign that this is the same man he nearly killed years ago. He thinks he sees a shadow of it, sees a flash of a faded mark on Draco’s arm, but can’t focus long enough to take any of it in.

Instead, Harry lets his head fall back against the tree and squeezes his eyes shut, groaning and then whining at the achingly slow stretch. Harry wants to bounce himself down on Draco’s cock but allows Draco to drag him in slowly instead, seating himself deeper and deeper inside Harry. Finally Harry is seated tight against Draco, and he can feel his own pulse in the heat where he’s stuffed full. “Fuck,” he says, wanting more and feeling like it’s already too much. He’s leaking on his own stomach and so turned on that he’s not sure Draco will need to do much than look at him before he comes. “Move,” Harry says. 

Draco doesn’t reply right away. Harry opens his eyes and lifts his head off the tree to see Draco shake his head minutely. “Wait,” he chokes out. “You’re so tight. Feels too good.” 

Draco’s looking at him now with something like wonder on his face, and Harry can’t stand it. He grabs the back of Draco’s head, getting his fingers caught in the silky knot of hair there, and pulls him in for a rough kiss. There’s whisky on Draco’s lips, and his mouth is wet heat and Harry tightens his muscles around Draco’s cock reflexively, dragging hissed curses out of both of them.

Draco is panting now, gripping him tight and close. He adjusts, spreading his stance a little wider and shifting Harry back so he has a better angle, and then he pulls back a fraction and thrusts, shoving into Harry and scraping the top of Harry’s back against the tree.

Draco grunts in frustration and Harry grunts in pleasure. The stinging pain is freeing and he uses the tree to shove himself hard onto Draco’s cock. “More, more.”

Sweat drips from Draco’s brow. Harry can see it in the dim light still hovering over the lake, and Draco asks a question with his eyes that Harry can only hope he answers with encouragement. He wants the pain. He desperately hopes Draco understands that. Or doesn’t care. Whatever Draco sees, it spurs him to move, using his strong arms and hands to lift and drop Harry onto his swollen cock, shifting the angle until he rubs over Harry’s prostate and Harry cries out.

Thank fuck, Draco doesn’t slow, doesn’t relent, once he’s hit on that precious, sensitive gland. He pounds into Harry, hitting his prostate over and over. They’re both slick with sweat, and Harry’s back is raw from the scrape, but with every stroke, Harry gets lighter and lighter, until nothing but the ache in his balls and his cock and his gut is holding him to the earth. Not even his magic, which has buzzed under his skin like a constant itch since he left Dumbledore at King’s Cross Station, can contain him, distract him. He’s helium, and Draco’s sex is a lead weight impaling him, shooting waves of pleasure over his weightless limbs and down to his curling toes.

“Touch yourself,” Draco says, finally, when his thrusts become quicker, more erratic.

Harry doesn’t want this to end, thinks he could probably come without it, but he’s too lost not to follow the command. He grabs his own length roughly and strokes up and down and up and down at the same time that Draco strokes over his prostate inside him. And then his climax rears up from deep in his balls and the base of his cock, obliterating the world around him with wave after wave of ecstasy as he comes all over Draco’s stomach and chest. The noise he makes is low and feral, a plea, and before it’s over he feels Draco shove in and shudder, pulsing into Harry’s stretched hole. Something warm spreads between them as the pleasure rolls over them both, a lighted connection that terrifies Harry and that he forces himself to break before it becomes unbearable.

Harry is close to unconscious, barely aware that Draco has pulled him away from the tree and laid them down together. Harry’s raw back is on thick, cool grass and Draco is kneeling between his legs, over him, still inside him. Harry’s eyes are shut and he doesn’t want to lose the physical contact even though he’s forced his magic to retreat. He doesn’t want Draco to pull out, doesn’t want the world to return. _This would be the way to die, _he thinks_. This would be a way I’d choose._

“Harry,” Draco says, and something in Harry shrinks back at the note of concern in his voice. Draco’s hand caresses his jaw and the pad of Draco’s thumb drags over his cheekbone. “You okay?”

Draco pulls out then, gently, but still it hurts and Harry hates that moment, hates the part of him that wishes he could obliterate the world for good. Live for the moment of orgasm and then be gone. 

He opens his eyes, knowing he’s less likely to trigger concern if he can respond. “’M fine,” he says. “Good. Really good.” He sighs. Every cell in his body has shot to the moon and back, and he tells himself to be glad for that. It’s enough. More than he could have expected.

Draco lies beside Harry then, looking blindly up at the sky. “Your back, Harry. That was masochistic.” He turns and looks at Harry and Harry blinks back at him. “I know some healing spells.”

“I liked it.” He did. He’s probably bleeding, which is inconvenient but nothing more. He knows how to heal it himself. But he isn’t up for the discussion, so he rolls onto his belly and pillows his head on his hands. “Go ahead.”

“I need my wand,” Draco says, sitting up beside Harry. “Where the fuck are our clothes?" 

“Oh, um.” Harry had simply wished them out of existence, which was brilliant in the heat of the moment and might be highly inconvenient to explain now. “Accio your wand,” he says, hoping Draco will be distracted for a moment. And then he quickly thinks the clothes back into existence under the tree.

Draco’s wand is in his hand, and Harry doesn’t watch but hears him make the discovery of the pile of clothes only feet from where they lie. “How in Merlin’s name did you do that?”

“Magic,” Harry says, and hopes Draco will leave it at that.

“Cheeky,” is all Draco says in reply. And then he’s leaning over Harry, carefully spelling the wounds clean and accelerating the healing. He is mercifully quiet as he does it, muttering but not bothering Harry with a blow-by-blow description of the wreck of his back. The magic is cool and then hot on his skin. Not painful, but skirting the edge of pain. “There,” Draco says, finally.

“Thanks.” Harry rolls over slowly, testing the new skin and finding it supple. He looks up at Draco, who’s still stark naked and leaning over Harry expectantly. “We should get back before Hermione sends out a search party.”

“Pansy won’t let her.” Draco sets down his wand in the grass and runs a hand down Harry’s side, fingers playing over Harry’s ribs. He doesn’t say anything, but Harry can see disapproval on his face. 

Which won’t do. He flashes Draco the realest smile he can muster and hauls himself into a sitting position. He’s dizzy for a moment, but it’s the orgasm and the alcohol, not hunger this time. Maybe some of it is exhaustion. “I’m bloody tired. That’s just what I needed to sleep tonight,” he says, hoping Draco hears his gratitude in the statement. He is grateful. More than he could properly express. And absolutely wrung out. He’d be in danger of wanting this again if there were any chance of it. He leans in for one last kiss, hoping they can both walk away feeling glad.

Draco kisses him back, slowly, sweetly. He presses his palm into Harry’s cheek and wraps his fingers around Harry’s neck and angles in for a deeper kiss, like he’s starting something instead of ending it. Harry loses himself for long seconds, a minute, feeling a hint of arousal growing at the base of his spine, and then forces himself to pull back. “Too bloody perfect,” Harry says, not meaning to say it, but not sorry he did. It’s true, and he doesn’t think he needs to pretend otherwise. 

Draco doesn’t let him go right away, holds on with his callused hand and forces Harry to look him in the eye. “Yes,” he says. “Unreal.”

Harry pulls away then, getting to his feet and gathering his clothes. There’s no point in hiding his skinny frame now. Draco has clearly noticed. He’s glad again that his pants and trousers grip his arse, and tries not to feel self-conscious as he shoves his arms into the over-large suit jacket. When he turns around, Draco is nearly dressed himself, though his eyes are on Harry. “I was coming over to talk to you,” Draco says. 

“What?”

“Tonight. When I walked over to you. I’d hoped we could talk.” 

“Oh,” Harry says, not knowing what to say. It isn’t that he didn’t know the sex was his idea, but it hasn’t occurred to him that Draco had any particular agenda. “Well, wasn’t this better?”

Draco’s smile at that is almost shy, and it does something unpleasant to Harry’s insides. “I’m not complaining.”

“Phew,” Harry says, knowing perfectly well the sex had been mind-blowing for both of them. And apparently he’s dodged a conversation with his archnemesis, so double-score on that count.

“But I’d still hoped we might talk,” Draco says, shrugging into his suit coat, which is perfectly tailored to hug his wide shoulders and taper at his trim waist. “Maybe I could… um…”

Harry is pretty sure he doesn’t want to hear the rest of that sentence, but he’d also be lying if he said that he wasn’t intoxicated by Draco. It’s been so long since he’s felt as present as he felt when Draco was buried inside of him, so maybe… maybe that means they could do it again. “Yes?”

“Maybe I could teach you to fly-fish, if you really want to learn.”

“Huh,” Harry says. 

Draco looks lost for a second or two, and then rearranges his face and squares off in front of Harry. “It’s an offer you can take or leave. I’ll be in England for a bit, maybe as long as a month. If you want a lesson, I’d enjoy teaching you. If not, I’ll understand. I’d like to talk, too, but I’ve no interest in talking to someone who doesn’t want to talk to me.”

With that, Draco turns and begins walking up the hill in the direction of the castle, extinguishing the lights over the lake behind them.

Harry doesn’t race after him, but he does force himself to move, lengthening his stride. “Draco, hold up." 

Draco stops and waits for Harry to get in front of him.

“Look, it’s not so much that I don’t want to talk to you as it is that talking is no good for me right now. I needed that—” Harry waves his hand at the dark lakeside behind them, to indicate the bone-melting sex they’ve just had. “—more. So, thank you.” He hopes Draco’s expression will relax, and it does. “I think I’d like to learn to fly-fish. If you have time and can come up to Deeside, you’d be welcome. I can’t promise I’ll be any more inclined to talk, but I’ll try to listen.”

Draco nods and looks at Harry in a way that already feels hypnotising. Dangerous. “Do you have fishing gear?”

Harry shakes his head.

“Okay. When?”

“Whenever.” It’s not as though Harry’s getting any writing done.

“I need to spend some time with my mother. Next week?”

“Okay.”

They agree on Wednesday, and trudge back up to the castle. It must be late, and Harry sees partygoers trickling out of the now open front doors in pairs and small groups, some Apparating from the courtyard and others walking out as though they’re headed to Hogsmeade. They make their way through the small stream of their classmates, exchange greetings and goodbyes, ignore the questioning looks they get, and finally make it back to the Great Hall.

The crowd has thinned considerably, though there are still a couple dozen people chatting at tables or propping up the bar. Harry sees Pansy first, and hopes he can detach from Draco quickly enough to avoid the inquisition.

“Pansy won’t,” Draco says, as though he’s read Harry’s mind. “She won’t say anything. At least until later. Granger, on the other hand.”

Harry turns and sees Hermione marching towards him, incandescent in red silk. No, not angry, but concerned. Which might be worse. “Pansy swore you were okay, but you didn’t tell a soul where you’d gone,” she says. “Hello, Draco.” It’s as though she’s just noticed him. “I’m sorry, it’s none of my business. I thought Harry had left without saying goodbye.”

“We went to get some air, got talking about fishing,” Draco says, lying smoothly in a way that Harry used to loathe and that in this moment he admires.

Hermione visibly relaxes and even smiles. It’s a bizarre reaction for her to have to Draco Malfoy, but there’s no question the matured version of Draco has charm in addition to looks. “I’m glad you got a chance to talk. That’s what tonight was about.”

“Right,” Harry says. He refuses to feel guilty for fucking instead of talking. It was the fuck of the decade. Maybe of his life, but he’s not going to think about that now. For minutes, half an hour even, he was somewhere he chose to be and feeling things he hasn’t felt in years. He’ll take his version of the reunion over Hermione’s any day, thank you very much. He’s shattered now, and needs to get home with as little fuss as possible. “I’m not going to be vertical much longer. Think I might go, unless you need help cleaning up.” There’s no way Hermione will let kitchen elves do it. 

“We’ll leave it till tomorrow,” Hermione says. “Some students volunteered to help. Ron and I will come back. It should be quick.”

Brilliant. Harry expects Draco to be similarly relieved, but instead he’s looking around the room with a serious expression on his troublingly gorgeous face. “I can come back with Pansy,” he says. “Plenty to do.”

Harry exchanges a look of shock with Hermione, wondering if he’s heard correctly. And then he has a moment of wondering whether he’s standing next to Draco Malfoy at all, or some polyjuiced imposter. He has Draco’s wand, but no version of the boy Harry grew up with would offer to clean up after a party.

Hermione recovers first. “Are you going back to London?”

Draco looks around again, his gaze catching on Pansy, who appears mighty tipsy as she talks animatedly to Blaise and Millicent. “Pansy and I have rooms in Hogsmeade. It’s late. We’ll probably stay.”

Harry is blindsided by a pang of emotion so foreign he almost doesn’t recognise it. Jealousy? It’s fleeting, but for a moment he wishes he was part of the human flow, part of Draco’s flow, even. With rooms in Hogsmeade and the night and morning ahead. Maybe even a chance to see Teddy.

The feeling is gone by the time he’s put a thought to it and he yearns for the quiet of his cabin. He’s determined to follow through on the promise he made to himself that he’d darken the room and give sleep a real effort. “Good of you to help, Draco.”

Hermione beams at Draco, as though he’s the star pupil in her primary school class.

“Say good night to Ron, will you?” He searches the room but doesn’t find his friend.

“He went with Neville and Luna to take a look at the Quidditch pitch." 

Thank Merlin they’d been nowhere near the lakeside.

Harry isn’t sure how to take his leave. He gives Hermione a quick hug and is facing the dreadful prospect of shaking hands with the man who shagged his brains out a short time ago, but Draco rescues him with a friendly arm squeeze, and says goodnight.

Harry waves goodnight, notices Minerva and the faculty seem to have also retired, and goes back out to the courtyard to Apparate home. He looks up at the castle one last time, expecting he might see a face in the window, but sees only darkened panes. He misses Teddy. He misses Hogwarts. It hurts, but that’s something. More than nothing.

And then he leaves. 


	5. Chapter 5

Draco is in a state of shock as he watches Harry leave the Great Hall, but he’s determined not to betray it to Hermione Granger. Or Pansy, for that matter, who’s much more likely to give him grief if she notices. It’s a mercy she’s smashed. He’d taken a chance when he lied to Hermione about his and Harry’s disappearance, uncertain where dishonesty ranks in Harry’s Gryffindor hierarchy of sins. He’s pretty sure Harry was relieved at the lie, and why wouldn’t he be?

Draco is not entirely convinced that what just happened actually happened. Except that physically, at least, he’s still relaxed in that boneless, exhausted way that only intense orgasm ever achieves. And Draco can still taste the mint Harry used to cover what should have been whisky on his lips. A charm, it must have been, but he’s not sure when Harry cast it.

His goals are short term at the moment. Collect Pansy, or not. Retreat to his room in Hogsmeade. Lock the door. Sleep like the dead. Make every effort not to replay the last hour in his mind, endlessly. The chance of failure at that last is high. 

It isn’t until he realises Hermione is speaking to him that he also notices he’s still staring at the doors Harry left through. “Hmm, sorry?” 

“I said, it’s kind of you to offer to help clean up. It shouldn’t take long.” Draco has the impression she’s gearing up to say something else entirely. She launches into it before he can stop her. “I wish…that is…it’s none of my business, and probably none of yours, but I wish Harry had offered. His godson volunteered, hoping to see him I’m sure. It’s brutal loving Harry these days.”

Draco has to clench his teeth to stop his jaw from dropping at that statement. And the fact that she’s said it to him. He can’t imagine why she has, and it seems to occur to her, too, that she’s overstepped. “Damn, I’m sorry. That was not…He’s your cousin, though, I believe. Your mother’s been awfully kind to him. Teddy. I’m sure he’d love to meet you.”

Draco struggles to follow the conversation. He’s still stuck on what she’s just said about Harry.

Teddy. His mother has written to him of Teddy. He’d be well into his teen years now. The thought of meeting the boy—a war orphan—is almost more intimidating than confronting this reunion has been.

Merlin, if he’d just avoided Harry Potter tonight, he might be tucked up in London by now, all of this behind him. Instead it’s late, and for reasons he can’t fathom, he’s offered to stay on. He’s pretty sure he should have avoided Harry Potter tonight for reasons more serious than mere inconvenience, but those reasons are going on the growing list of things he isn’t going to think about now.

“I’d be pleased to meet him. And I’m happy to help.” He sounds stiff to his own ears.

“Draaco!” Pansy sashays in their direction, a wide smile on her face and Blaise and Millie in tow. “I lost you! Come say goodbye! Can we stay in Hogsmeade? Please?” All of this is said in the dramatic tones of a novice drunk. Which is quite surprising. He expects Pansy to be a pro.

“I was just telling Hermione we’d stay on. Come back tomorrow to help clean up.” He hopes Pansy won’t make a big deal of the offer. Harry looked like he’d have a stroke about it. “Blaise. Millie. It’s been nice to catch up.” 

He hasn’t quite got a read on Millicent, but she seems in good spirits and cheerfully told him about her wife and their twins earlier in the evening, so he’s put her in the “turned out well” column. “Lovely evening, Hermione,” Millie says. “I was just telling Pansy. I was nervous about coming, but I’m glad I did.”

“I’m so glad you came, Millicent.”

“Great party, Hermione,” Blaise says. “The sight of Greg Goyle on the dance floor getting down to ‘Do the Hippogriff’ was enough to make me look forward to our thirtieth.”

Draco tries to picture them all fifteen years older still. Blaise at forty-eight will likely be even better looking. Before he can stop himself, he imagines Harry with greying temples and a creased brow. 

“I refuse to get a day older,” Pansy says, listing into Draco’s side and clutching his arm for balance. “Cate will have to eventually catch up with me.”

“Ew,” Millie says. “What an awful thought. I don’t want the twins to ever be older than I am. Not unless I’m much older than I am. If you follow.”

“I’m with you,” Hermione agrees.

Draco can’t imagine having children. It’s not that he’s never thought of it. Growing up, the expectation he’d produce a Malfoy heir was so ingrained that even as a child he’d imagined himself a father. But it’s been years since he entertained any thought of parenthood, and he’s never had a chance to consider whether it’s something he wants.

“I think aging is fine,” Draco says, thinking how much better they are as people now.

“Fine for you,” Pansy says. “The years haven’t hurt you a bit.” She leers up at him, and it would bother him if he didn’t know she was teasing.

“I think we’d better get you some sleep, Pansy. You’re delirious.” Draco’s been glad to see his friends. Truly glad. He’s desperate to be alone now. “What time should we be here tomorrow?” he asks Hermione.

“The Hall needs to be cleared before breakfast, I’m afraid. I’ll be here at six. It shouldn’t take an hour.”

Draco has plenty of practice at early shifts, so he promises to be there and shuffles Pansy out into the courtyard after a final round of goodbyes. She could probably use a walk in the night air, but he’s absolutely finished, and he Side-Alongs her to the inn before she can protest.

He walks her to her door. As she lets herself in he finds himself releasing a sigh of relief that he’s made it through the night.

Pansy turns on him, though, a sly look on her face. “Your hair’s a mess and there’s a grass stain on the back of your suit coat. Just because I’m drunk doesn’t mean I don’t know perfectly well what you and Harry got up to while you were out.”

Draco is stunned for a moment, blinking stupidly at her. He should’ve known she’d notice, but he thought he’d got away with it. And it isn’t clear from her tone of voice how badly she disapproves. Oh gods, he hopes she doesn’t know precisely what they got up to.

Then an even scarier thought occurs to him. “Shite. Do you think…? Hermione didn’t seem to question that we’d just gone for a walk.”

Pansy leans against the doorjamb and straightens Draco’s lapel. “She wouldn’t. She’s a good friend. She loves Harry like a brother. But she has a blind spot where he’s concerned. It’d never occur to her.”

“That he could be with someone like me?”

Pansy’s smile vanishes. “What the hell does that mean?”

“You know what it means, Pansy.” He appreciates her loyalty, but their classmates know how much she’s changed because they watched it happen. “It’s not as though I’ve had fifteen years to show her or anyone else who I am. Who am I? A former Death Eater who fishes herring for a living. What could that possibly mean to them?” 

Pansy was never one for extensive self-reflection, but she has to understand why it matters that no one knows who he’s become. He’s not sure who that is himself, as he’s been reminding himself increasingly lately. “Draco, I may not know you the way I once did. Hermione may not know you at all. But no one thinks you’re the same person you were in school. Not one of us is. I think that’s where Hermione is mistaken about Harry. He’s the only person she expects to remain the same. And he’s changed more than any of us. She just can’t see it.”

“How do you know? I thought you hadn’t seen him in years.”

“I haven’t. I only know what Hermione and Ron tell me. And your mother, for that matter. But it’s enough. He is exceptionally unhappy. As far as I can tell, he has been since the war.”

Draco can’t decide which to tackle first. Harry’s unhappiness, or… “My mother? What has she got to say about Harry Potter?”

“For one thing, that he’s nearly abandoned his godson. She dotes on Teddy.” It’s the second time Teddy’s name has surfaced in an hour. Why doesn’t he know more about the boy? “I don’t say this to make you feel guilty, Draco. Narcissa always understood why you left. I think she was glad on some level that you were away for the worst years after the war. But you must know she never quite forgave your father for putting you in harm’s way. And then when Lucius died, he took the focus of her anger with him. She was lonely.” Of course she was. Draco knows that. It still guts him. “Until she reconciled with Andromeda. And then they both had Teddy in their lives. And Teddy tells her things. About Harry. She tells me.”

“I didn’t realise Teddy had become so important to her.”

“Oh, don’t make that face. No one could replace you in her affections. You hang the sun and the moon. You know that.”  
  
“I have no right to.” He doesn’t. Sometimes he thinks he’s stayed away so long to prove to himself that his mother could forget, move on.

“You’re her son, Draco. That entitles you to all the love she has to give. I say that as a mother, as much as a friend. Our families may have a lot to answer for, but Narcissa has always got one thing right, and that’s the way she loves you.”

Something gathers at the back of Draco’s throat, and the sting in his eyes warns him that it’s a sob in time to pull it back. He digs the palms of his hands into his eye sockets and pulls himself back a fraction from Pansy. He hasn’t felt emotion like this, felt… just felt… in so long.

That’s why he came home, wasn’t it? Wasn’t he tired of the disconnected apathy that’s taken him over? His mother isn’t the only one who’s been lonely.

It still terrifies him to feel what he’s feeling in this moment. And the second the emotion threatens to swamp him, his mind goes to the sensation of Harry surrounding him, grasping him with legs and arms and arse. It’s the most connected he’s felt to another human being in recent memory. Maybe that he can recall, full stop. 

Pansy pulls at his wrists, tugging his hands away from his face and forcing him to look at her. “Sorry, Draco. This is a lot, I know. Being here. It’s been a long time.” She’s still dewy eyed with alcohol, but she’s his closest friend. He hates being seen like this. Being like this. But if someone has to see, he’s glad it’s Pansy.

He clears his throat. “I’m exhausted. You’re drunk. Let’s get some sleep. You can have a lie-in if you like. I’m happy to help the clean-up and make your excuses. 

She gapes up at him much the same way Hermione and Harry had earlier. “I don’t know everything you’ve been through, Draco, but you’re a peach. I might take you up on that offer.”

It’s embarrassing to get so much credit for basic decency. “Sure. If you’re awake, come up to Hogwarts. If not, I’ll swing by after and we can head back to London together.”

____________________

Draco wakes without an alarm a handful of hours later. He was at sea less than a week ago, working eighteen hour days to keep that junk heap afloat and the fish from rotting. The captain and three-quarters of the crew had seemed uninterested in succeeding at either. By comparison, putting the Great Hall back together with a handful of wizards and witches will be a lark. And the soft mattress he wakes on is a treat after his hard, little bed in Helsinki and years on narrow bunks at sea. Before he’s had a chance to inventory his mood, the relative ease of the day ahead and the deep, if too short, sleep propel him out of bed with an energy he hasn’t felt in months.

The sun is up as early here as it would be at home and he’s determined to give himself time to walk to Hogwarts. Pansy brought a change of clothes for them both in her bottomless handbag, and he’d remembered to pluck them from her before she passed out last night. He washes up and dresses in faded denim and a long-sleeved cotton shirt in the dusty morning light, determined not to be self-conscious about returning to Hogwarts in Muggle clothes for the second day in a row. The innkeeper is stirring when he comes down, and Pansy is decidedly not. He thanks the old woman for the comfortable room and lets her know he’ll be back later in the morning.

Thick clouds, tinged with grey but not threatening imminent rain, fill the sky overhead. He remembers the way, but barely. It’s only because it’s a fairly straight shot back to the castle that he doesn’t make any wrong turns. The lush June landscape, even on an overcast day, is not how he remembers Hogsmeade or the countryside around Hogwarts. He remembers dying leaves, thick snow, and the barrenness of early spring. The boundless green and riotous wildflowers around him now remind him of Wyoming, or Finland in July, or the South of France. Not his school days, which are dark and colourless in his mind.

If it weren’t for the piercing memory of what happened last night, he isn’t certain he’d know where he is. But he does know, because before he fell asleep last night he’d replayed the best orgasm of his life over and over again. His body is so accustomed to physical exertion that the brutal fuck against a tree with Harry’s weight in his arms has left almost no physical reminders. But he doesn’t need a physical reminder. He can’t stop thinking about Harry. Aside from the fact that he hasn’t come like that, come apart like that, in years, or maybe ever—it was with Harry fucking Potter. Or fucking Harry Potter. He slaps himself mentally.

It had occurred to him, standing in the Great Hall and monitoring Potter’s every movement last night, that the remotest chance he might talk to Harry Potter was perhaps only second to seeing his mother and Pansy among the reasons he agreed to come here at all. He isn’t sure even now what he’d planned to say to the man, but whatever it was, it remains unsaid. An apology? Perhaps not. Perhaps he simply wanted a chance to see Harry clearly for who he is today, and maybe be seen by him in return. He wanted—wants—a chance to move forward. The fact that Harry saved his life, and that he walked free on Harry’s testimony and never looked back, literally never even looked at Harry after the trial, matters still somehow.

He shakes off his reverie as the castle comes into view. And the lake, which is dark and still under the cloudy sky. There’s nothing about its grand imprint on the landscape that remembers Harry or Draco, and Draco has a fleeting thought that he’d like to drop a line in after they’ve finished with the Great Hall and see what he can fish out. Harry had suggested fishing last night, but then abandoned the idea as quickly as it’d come to him. 

The school is quiet when Draco lets himself through the front doors and makes his way to the Great Hall, which he finds standing open and empty. He casts Tempus and discovers he’s fifteen minutes early. There’s no reason to wait, so he starts with the most obvious task, pulling out his wand to clear the floor of debris: streamers fallen from the ceiling, deflating balloons, half-drunk mugs of mead, and shot glasses coated with firewhisky sludge. He cleans quickly, using spells he’s learned at sea, and his hands as well. He’s made decent progress over the next ten minutes and doesn’t notice someone has entered until he hears the familiar sound of a throat clearing behind him.

He sets the mugs he has in his hand down and shifts awkwardly under McGonagall’s gaze. “Headmistress.”

“Draco. You’re early.” She’s standing as upright as ever, but somehow looks out of place amidst the party’s detritus.

“Habit. I pulled a lot of early shifts on my last sail.”

She nods, seeming to know what he’s talking about. He wonders if his unusual occupation made the gossip rounds last night. “Well, I won’t keep you. The others will be along. I wanted to say, Draco…” She stalls, looking uncertain, which is disconcerting. Her stolid presence during his school days had irked him, but he wants it back right now. “Erm, well, you’re a lovely surprise. That’s all.”

Draco is grateful that she departs on those words, not wanting to dwell on them. He’d told Hermione last night he wasn’t interested in being anyone’s novelty. He understands people’s natural curiosity. It’s not the same curiosity they have about Harry Potter. Quite the opposite, really. But he’d been spectacularly atrocious, and so he can’t expect people not to wonder about him now.

“Draco! You’re early!” 

Hermione is at the door with Ron Weasley, who looks like no amount of hangover potion could make up for lack of sleep.

“Good morning. I guess I’m still on Finnish time.”

The spells Draco has cast are still working their way through the room, but the surface cleaning is winding up. “There’ll be nothing left for the latecomers,” Hermione says, and her husband takes that as his cue to sprawl on the nearest bench. 

“Could’ve slept another half hour,” Ron mutters, pulling out his wand and flicking it at the table rounds, sending them into stacks in the corner. Despite his lazy demeanour, he wastes no time getting to work, and Draco reminds himself that there’s no reason to expect less.

The three of them are quick, exchanging few words. Hermione, who was so talkative the previous evening, is quiet and focused as she works. Draco can’t help but admire her spells. She’s efficient in ways he approves, and if he’s honest, shows him a thing or two. The DJ booth with its combination of magic speakers and Muggle electronics is the most complicated part of the room to disassemble and prepare for removal from the Hall, but Hermione manages it with two simple spells and moves on to the dance floor.

They’ve been at it nearly twenty minutes when three students tromp into the hall. They’re wearing robes and look nearly as tired as Ron. 

A girl no more than twelve or thirteen sweeps elegantly ahead of her friends. Draco sees her first but Ron is quick to get up from his seat when he finally notices her standing beside him. “Victoire, you made it.”

He goes to embrace her and she darts in with a kiss on each cheek, swatting him in the process. 

“Uncle,” she says, as though it’s a joke. And then she laughs. “You’re so funny.”

She’s lovely and Draco can see her mother in her. This must be Bill Weasley and Fleur’s child.

And standing silently behind her is a boy with a magenta streak through his hair, giving him away as the famous Teddy. He’s eyeing Draco, and Draco gives him a nod, hoping to be introduced.

Hermione tucks her wand away and greets Victoire with the kisses she expects, and then grabs Teddy into a bear hug. “Teddy! Come say hello to your cousin. And who might this be?” Hermione asks, turning to the girl who looks the youngest of the three, and who’s bouncing on her toes as though she’s about to burst.

“Sarah Goyle,” Teddy says, still watching Draco. “Her dad was here last night.”

“Of course!” Hermione says. “Welcome. Your parents said they’d be back this morning to take you to Hogsmeade.”

“Did Dad make an arse of himself on the dance floor?” the girl asks, as though she’s been waiting all night to know. “He wrote and told me it was a good thing I wasn’t allowed to come to the party because he intended to be thoroughly embarrassing.”

Draco laughs despite himself and Teddy gives him a small smile. 

“Nah,” Ron says. “Your dad danced enthusiastically. Nothing to be embarrassed about.” 

“Sounds embarrassing,” Sarah says, clearly gleeful at the thought of her father being ridiculous. Draco finds it all a wonder.

Hermione introduces Draco to all three of the students. He greets them and reminds himself as he shakes Teddy’s hand that this generation’s losses happened when they were very young, or before they were even born. It’s still a conscious effort not to recoil from their scrutiny.

“Aunt Narcissa talks about you all the time,” Teddy tells him. “Do you really live at sea?” 

It’s never occurred to Draco that his mother talks about what he does to anyone. He’s always assumed without asking that she must be mildly ashamed. “I have a flat on land, but yes, I do spend most of my time at sea.”

“Sounds dangerous,” Victoire says. “And cold.” 

Draco laughs. The oddity of having this conversation at Hogwarts, with Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger looking on, with Bill Weasley’s daughter and Harry Potter’s godson, is extreme. His cousin whom he’s never met. Greg Goyle’s daughter, of all people. The idea that they’re all here, getting on with life while he’s been away, is both sad and delightful at once. “It’s definitely cold. Not so dangerous sailing with wizards, but it has its hairy moments.”

Hermione puts an end to the conversation and gets them all to work. Now that the Hall is cleared, the six of them return the long tables and chairs for the morning meal. There’ll be a stampede of hungry Hogwarts students arriving within the quarter hour, but they’ve removed all traces of the reunion by the time the food begins to appear on the tables and the faculty files in.

Draco is itching to get out of the castle, but doesn’t want to seem too anxious. It isn’t that there’s anything wrong with the company, and he’s dreadfully curious about Teddy, but he’s wiped out from so much social interaction and needs to be outdoors for a while.

Luckily, Ron is more tired than he is and determined to drag Hermione off almost as soon as they’ve finished. Victoire says goodbye and joins her classmates now streaming into the Hall. Sarah excuses herself to meet her parents in the courtyard and promises to let her father know that she’s met his old friend, Draco Malfoy.

Draco is just about to say a quick goodbye when Teddy takes Hermione aside. Ron gives Draco a look that says ‘don’t interfere,’ and the two of them stand silently pretending not to hear every word of the conversation. 

“He was here, wasn’t he?” 

“Yes, Teddy. I’m afraid we made him feel horribly guilty. He wouldn’t have come otherwise.”

“But he’s not here now,” Teddy says, stating the obvious. 

“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t… I didn’t tell him you’d volunteered to help this morning. I think he would have come back for that. But he seemed so tired…”

“I understand,” Teddy says, cutting her off. He clearly doesn’t understand. How could he when Harry’s best friends don’t seem to know what’s wrong with him? 

Hermione embraces the boy and whispers something in his ear. Draco forces himself to turn around and give Teddy a warm goodbye. “My mother will be pleased that we’ve met. You’re very important to her,” he says, parroting what others have told him but recognising that it must be true. And also feeling grateful that they have each other.

Even after the last twenty-four hours, he’s still surprised when Hermione pulls him into a hug. “Thanks so much for your help, Draco. I hope you’ll stay in touch.” He can’t imagine how or why, but says he will. 

And then Ron Weasley—dull, witless Ron Weasley—grasps his hand in a firm shake, tells him thanks, and adds under his breath, “I don’t know what you and Harry were up to last night, but he’s hurting and I’ll hurt you if you make it worse.” He smiles as he says it, making sure his wife hasn’t heard him. Draco is impressed despite himself and nods, taking the threat as seriously as it’s meant.

“Understood. I only mean to teach him to fish, if he likes.” Ron holds onto his hand a moment longer and looks him in the eye as he says it. Then finally nods and lets him go.

____________________ 

Free from the task and free from Gryffindors and free from the castle, Draco wavers about whether to head straight back to the inn or have a gander at the lake. It’s still early, and Pansy is likely to sleep another hour or two, so he takes the hill down to the lake in long strides and keeps an eye out for fallen branches he might transfigure into a fishing rod. He finds the perfect one not far from the tree where he and Harry… He forces all of his focus away from the memory and onto the meditative task ahead. He uses magic to fashion the rod and reel, the fishing line and hook, but he uses his hands to dig around the muddy bank in search of an earthworm, just the way he did at a lake in Quebec. Soil is caked under his nails by the time he’s found one big enough to entice something larger than an undersized perch or a tiny grayling. Not that he expects to pull a five pound Arctic charr out of the loch with an earthworm, but he guesses this water is rarely fished and teeming with monsters if only he had the right bait.

He transfigures a pebble into a suitable weight for the end of his line and casts into the dark water, letting his lungs fill with fresh air and the sound of his line soothe him as he reels it in.


	6. Chapter 6

“Harry! Harry!”

Harry is underwater. Underground. Buried under a thick wool blanket. Wherever he is, it is _under _and someone is calling his name. He can’t surface. Doesn’t wish to. He’s been under for a long time, and nothing good can come of surfacing. Thoughts intrude. He pictures a fish breaking the water, gasping for oxygen. The fish reminds him of something, of someone. Someone breathtaking. Maybe he’s the fish, he thinks, as he comes conscious gasping for air.

He’s disorientated in the dark. And he _is _under a heavy blanket, it turns out. He’s sweating and if it weren’t for the increasingly familiar voice calling his name from his fireplace in the den, he wouldn’t know where he is. He doesn’t bother to rush. No matter how long he takes, Wanda will continue to bellow his name until he appears. As long as she doesn’t try to come through, she can yell all she wants.

Eventually, seconds or maybe minutes later, Harry sits up in bed, pushing off the suffocating duvet and spelling a dim glow over the room so his eyes adjust before he steps out into the bright of day. Now that he’s awake, he’s pretty sure it’s well into the day. He’s been sleeping nearly round the clock since he returned from Hogwarts Saturday night. It must be Monday. Possibly Tuesday. He couldn’t say what’s happened to him. He only knows that after months without sleep, he’s struggling to stay awake. Maybe it was the stress of the reunion. Maybe it was sex with Draco Malfoy. Maybe he’s simply ready to stop being conscious. He couldn’t say for certain which it is, but his magic is heavy on him like the blanket, like water, like soil. Instead of buzzing under his skin the way it has for years, it feels as though it’s sunk into him, pulling him under.

He gets up and plunders his dresser for a T-shirt and sweatpants to pull on before braving sunlight and the telling off he’s about to get. It’s not bright, though, when he pulls open his bedroom door. It’s dark, in fact. It could be anytime between midnight and three in the morning, but then why is his agent firecalling him? Something’s not right, and he rushes for his den.

“Wanda?”

“Harry, goodness sake, you scared me! Come closer. Are you okay?”

He imagines he’s a fright, but she won’t get a good look at him through the fire. Thank Merlin for small favours. “I’m fine. I was sleeping. What time is it?”

He casts Tempus and finds it’s six in the morning. It’s awfully dark for six in the morning this time of year. Oh, bloody hell. He must have cast Nox over the whole house. He removes the spell immediately, hoping Wanda doesn’t notice the wandless magic, and discovers it is still dim outside. Raining heavily by the sound of it rattling against the panes, now that the spell is lifted.

“Sorry, love, you’re usually up all hours. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

Harry slows his panicked pulse and takes a deep breath, relieved there’s no emergency. “I’m usually awake.” He considers explaining to her why he’s asleep at this hour, but he’s still working that out himself. It would be a colossal mistake to ask what day it is.

“I won’t keep you long. I was worried when you didn’t answer. But I’m glad you’re getting some rest. Finally.” Wanda mothers him almost as badly as Molly. He’s not sure why he invites that treatment. Something about him must scream ‘orphan in need.’ He’s often thought he should do something to change that, but clearly a part of him likes it because he does very little to discourage either Molly or Wanda from fussing.

“Is this a business call?” he asks, because it’s early for that.

She hesitates and Harry winces. He knows what’s coming.

“Harry, sweetheart, I hate what this pressure is doing to you. And I hate to be the one pressuring. If there were anything I could do…”

“It’s not your fault, Wanda. I took the advance, and I’m the one who hasn’t delivered. You don’t have to worry. I haven’t spent a penny of their money.”

He can’t read her expression in the fire, but he assumes that’s what Obscurus Books, his publisher, wants. If he isn’t going to produce the book, they’ll want their money back. But she shakes her head. “No, Harry, it’s not the money. That’s yours, whether you spend it or not.” 

“But I haven’t written the book. I haven’t written any usable part of a book.”

“And that’s the problem, Harry. Obscurus is going to get your story one way or another. Your contract promises them a book. If you don’t write it, they will.”

This isn’t news to him. Not exactly. He understood the contract when he signed it. He thought he’d have more time, though. Or he thought he’d be able to produce something at least. “How long do I have?”

“They’ve found three potential writers already. I’d say not long. If you could produce even a chapter, Harry, I think we could put them off another six months.”

A chapter. It isn’t that Harry hasn’t written anything. He has been at it for more than a year now, after all. It’s simply that he hasn’t written anything he wants to share. He hasn’t written anything anyone would want to read, either. It’s both too personal and utter crap. But one chapter, maybe now that he’s had some sleep… maybe. “Can you get me a month?”

“I can try. If you could produce something in a few weeks, get some of what you’ve written into shape, that would be safer.”

“Thanks, Wanda.” He knows how badly she feels about his predicament, so he doesn’t want to make it any worse by betraying his own anguish. He’s pretty sure there’s no way he can produce a cogent chapter in two weeks. If he’s honest with himself, he’s not likely to ever produce anything he can share.

She’s silent a moment, but before she goes, she tells him, “I’ll leave you to it. But Harry. I’m glad you’ve had some rest, dear. Your health is more important than this book.” And with that, she disappears.

His health. Harry has to stifle a sneering laugh at that. He stands on one side of death knowing there’s light and people he loves, people who were ripped from him, standing on the other. Is it healthy to be on this side when he could be on the other? He has no idea what it means to be healthy when he can’t forget his own death, or to be carrying magic so powerful it feels like it’s using him instead of the reverse. 

Now that his sluggishness has cleared, Harry is more awake than he recalls being in months. His magic more settled in him. He’s been conscious sporadically since the reunion, but only long enough to sip tea, nibble toast, use the loo, and return to bed. It could very well be as late as Tuesday. He decides he’ll put off finding out how much time he’s lost until he’s had a run. It’s raining, but if he let rain stop him, he’d have spent most of the last year indoors.

The trouble with running is that it clears his mind, and while that’s generally welcome, now it brings with it inconvenient flashbacks to Saturday night. Inconvenient because whatever it was that’d possessed him to proposition Draco Malfoy, it had been a brilliant decision as far as his body’s concerned and he’ll find it exceptionally difficult if he has to run with a semi.

Draco had given him exactly what he needed. And Harry has told himself several times since Saturday that sex with Draco means not having to worry about an emotional mess, even if he did see something unsettling in Draco’s eyes that night. He’s learnt the hard way that he’s not fit for more than sex. He’s fairly certain Draco had nothing more in mind than tedious penance when he approached Harry, but he was bloody perfect once Harry convinced him they could do better than that.

It’d been over too quick, but bloody hell Draco had done a number on him. And maybe that’s why he’s been sleeping ever since? Maybe Draco fucked him into oblivion. Maybe he released enough energy to finally be able to relax. Or maybe he gave himself permission to sleep. Whatever the reasons, he feels fantastic physically, if not a little confused as to why he invited Draco to teach him to fish.

Perhaps not entirely confused. He wouldn’t mind a repeat. Maybe even a longer version of the same song. Draco said he wanted to talk, but Harry’s skilled at evading conversation these days. He’s not interested in rehashing the past, anyway. Unless it’s the past weekend’s activities.

Harry scolds himself as he splatters mud up and down his legs with each pounding step. Instead of thinking about Draco Malfoy, he should be thinking about his book, about how he’s going to turn some of what he’s written into a chapter in the next three weeks. He tells himself this for the last couple miles back to his cabin, unable to shake the thought that he’ll be faced with Draco again in a day or two. If he shows up.

He’s wondering how likely that is at precisely the moment he crests the hill with a view to his home, and precisely the moment the wards shudder at an arrival. It must be coincidence, but it appears he’s conjured the man simply by thinking of him, because there in front of his cabin is Draco, with two fishing rods and a holdall, protected from the rain by an umbrella charm. 

Harry altered the wards to allow Draco in as soon as he’d returned from the reunion, so he wouldn’t forget. Perhaps that had been a mistake, because either Draco is exceptionally early or… shit.

Draco turns in his direction, alerted to Harry by the raucous splashing as he makes his way down the hill.

Harry knows he resembles a wet rag, hair plastered to his head, clothes plastered to his skin, water running into his eyes. He tells himself it shouldn’t matter, that he doesn’t care what impression he makes on the man. He experiences a quick jolt of irrational anger at Draco for being here at all, making him self-conscious in ways he has no business being. 

Harry reminds himself he invited Draco, even if he’s not certain what day it is. He raises an arm in greeting as he jogs into the drive and stops at enough distance to prevent himself from kicking mud into Draco’s face. “I’m sorry. I lost track of time.” His house must reek of sleep. He hopes the state of it doesn’t invite further questions.

“I just arrived,” Draco says. “But if it’s bad timing…”

“No, no.” Harry is breathing heavily and has to walk to keep his muscles from seizing. “It’s only that I’ve left the house a mess.”

Draco looks him up and down, a slow, assessing gaze. “You’re very wet.” Then he smiles. “You do know you’re a wizard?”

“I like the rain.”

Draco looks like he’s going to say more, but stops himself.

Harry gestures towards the porch. “Go ahead and let yourself in. The door’s unlocked. I’ll be right behind you. You can leave the gear on the porch.” 

He watches Draco carefully balance the rods against the house and then carry his bag inside. Harry does another slow jogging circle of the yard, stretching as best he can in the cold rain, and then hops up the steps. He inspects the fishing rods and admires the detail on each. Long, double-handled rods and wide reels with thick, heavy line run through multiple rings and tied off at the end. They’re dull colours, olive and a muted red. On close inspection, they’re both painted with a delicate black design that dances like fish leaping in water. But it doesn’t actually dance. In fact, the design is quite still, and he doesn’t sense any magic about the rods. Everything—rod, reel, and line—seems decidedly Muggle. 

Harry spells himself dry, if not remotely clean or put together, and goes in. He finds Draco standing just inside the door, looking enormous—tall and broad shouldered—in Harry’s sloped-ceilinged cabin. He’s in Muggle clothes, just as he was the night of the reunion. Only this time it’s faded jeans and a dark grey T-shirt. He looks so unlike the Draco of Harry’s memory that he’s tempted to ask to see the hawthorn wand again, just to be sure. It’s not only his strapping figure, but his thick, long hair, and something about the way his mouth has softened in the absence of a sneer.

Harry’s front door opens onto the sitting room, and Draco appears to be waiting for an invitation to go further than the entrance. “Have a seat,” Harry says, gesturing to the sofa. “I’m going to take a quick shower.”

Harry has to slide past Draco to get into the house. Draco’s gaze is heavy on him as he kicks off his muddy trainers and makes his way across the room. “There’s a kettle if you’d like tea,” Harry adds. “Make yourself at home.” He hates what Draco’s physical proximity does to him. He isn’t used to feeling so aware of his own body. The desire that coils in him at the mere sight of the man plucks at his magic and unsettles it again, sending it along his nerve endings like a kaleidoscope of butterflies scattering across a field.

Draco watches him leave the room but doesn’t say a word, letting him escape to the bathroom. It requires an unusual amount of energy for him to strip and scrub himself clean without grabbing hold of his prick and releasing the mounting tension he feels. By the time he’s exiting the bathroom with a towel slung around his waist, he has half a mind to ditch the towel and detour to the sofa.

But no. Harry invited Draco here to fish, and that’s what they’ll do, assuming the rain isn’t a deterrent. And he’s going to have to keep it brief, because he has a book chapter to write and almost no time to do it. 

He dresses in an outfit very much like Draco’s, and then stalls for a moment in front of the mirror, messing around with his damp hair. When he begins to feel foolish, he forces himself to return to the sitting room. 

“Did you forget I was coming?” Draco asks from his stiff perch on Harry’s sofa. It doesn’t look like he’s made himself at home.

Harry leans against an armchair and debates the cost of honesty. There’s no point to spending time with Draco Malfoy if he has to put up a front. He hides a great deal from his closest friends and his adopted family, to spare them. There are no feelings here to spare. “I didn’t forget you were coming. I lost track of the days. I didn’t realise… it’s Wednesday, I guess.”

Instead of finding trouble in Harry’s confession, Draco nods. “It looks as though you got some rest since the weekend.”

“I did,” Harry says, startled by the observation.

“I hope it was welcome.” 

Harry can’t do more than nod in mute reply.

“If this is awkward, if you’ve changed your mind…” Draco leaves off and Harry is still unable to reply. 

He doesn’t know what he expected. He’d been burning with curiosity about Draco, and then when confronted with the man at the reunion, could only think to get in his pants. Now is his chance to find out who Draco Malfoy is, but he doesn’t know where to start. 

Finally, after a few beats of silent staring at one another, Harry gathers himself. “No, not at all. That is, it is awkward. But I haven’t changed my mind. I… I have a deadline is all. A day of fishing isn’t going to make a difference one way or another.”

“A deadline. For your book.”

Someone has apparently filled Draco in. Hermione, no doubt. “Yes. The publisher wants to hire a ghostwriter. And will, if I can’t prove to them I can write it myself.”

“Can you write it yourself?” Draco asks, forcing a choked laugh out of Harry. Not one single person has asked him that. They’ve asked whether he truly wants to. They’ve asked why he’s putting himself through it. But no one has asked whether he’s capable.

“I don’t think I can. No.” It’s such a tremendous relief to say so that Harry drops himself into the chair he’s been propped against and exhales, his eyes on the ceiling. “Merlin, what a mess.” He really doesn’t want Draco to ask the obvious question. He’s so desperate to forestall it that he answers it anyway. “I thought I could, at first. Or, I hoped I could. Mostly I wanted an excuse to get away.”

“Away from what?” Draco is watching him closely. His posture is erect, as it always was in school, but he’s listening, which Harry doesn’t ever recall him doing. At least not to Harry. And there isn’t a trace of a sneer on his face.

“From London. From the attention. From the Ministry.” From my friends, he thinks. Not because he doesn’t love them, but because he does.

Draco still doesn’t prompt him to say more. Instead, he says, “I find fishing helps me to sort things out. Maybe running does that for you? Or maybe a few hours on the river now and then would help.”

“I’m not sure how fishing will help me become a writer,” Harry says. 

“It won’t.” There’s still no sarcasm or meanness to his tone. Harry is waiting for it, and it doesn’t come. “Only, you’ll have to decide what to do about the book eventually.”

Harry knows this, but can’t imagine what fishing has to do with his predicament. He faces two choices if he can’t produce a chapter. Concession to a ghostwriter, or a miserable legal battle he’s almost certain to lose. 

Draco senses his scepticism. “Here’s the thing about fishing. It’s primal. Maybe you’ll hate it, but maybe you won’t. It focuses me. I find I write better when I’ve spent some hours on the water.”

Harry understands the words and is thoroughly confused by them. He’s not sure what Draco means by primal. And what is he writing? He considers what to ask first, but Draco stands while he’s hesitating and waves Harry’s obvious confusion away.

“Can I show you?”

“Yes,” Harry says, glad to end the conversation.

Draco pulls out his holdall and begins to empty its contents on Harry’s sitting room floor. He pulls out two pairs of waders and boots from the bottomless bag, what Harry assumes is a tackle box, a cooler, a rain-resistant coat, and a knapsack, which he sets aside. “Have you got a coat for the weather?” 

Harry has one mouldering away in a closet somewhere. He hasn’t worn it in ages. But they may run into Muggles on the river, and clearly Draco has thought of that. “I’ll find it.”

The decayed anorak turns up in his guestroom closet. It requires cleaning and mending spells, which Harry casts quickly, realising he’d better find his wand before Draco notices he’s without it. He discovers it in his own bedroom, hiding under the bed where he must have dropped it on Saturday night.

When he returns to the sitting room, Draco is suited up in boots and waders, pulling on his raincoat. “We can sort the tackle outside. I don’t want to make a mess of your house.”

Harry peers around the room, noting abandoned mugs growing mould on nearly every surface, a sheaf of parchment with his unhappy scrawl piled on a chair, a tattered afghan on the back of the sofa, his muddy trainers by the door, and again wonders if Draco is being sarcastic. When he catches Draco’s eye, he sees nothing teasing there. It’s disconcerting, especially because his body responds every time he looks at Draco with a shiver of recognition he can’t explain. 

Harry doesn’t argue. He pulls the second pair of waders and boots on. They fit, magically, probably literally, but he doesn’t bother asking Draco how he managed that. Instead, he follows Draco out to the porch, slipping on his oversized coat and crouching down to peer into the tackle box Draco is opening. Inside are several accordion shelves, each crammed with what Harry assumes are fly lures, spools of the same heavy fishing line on the rods, ball weights, a bottle of water, and a polystyrene foam container with holes in its plastic lid. “Is there something alive in there?” Harry asks, pointing to the container.

“Earthworms. Just in case. I got in the habit in North America. You never know when you might stumble across the right body of water.” Harry tries to picture Draco Malfoy tromping across the landscape in search of the perfect body of water to hook an earthworm and drop a line, and smiles at the incongruent image in his head. 

“The flies are beautiful. May I?” Harry says, pointing to one of the elaborate, multi-coloured lures. 

“Yes. Mind the hook.” 

Harry picks the lure out of the box carefully. It’s one of dozens, each of them unique with red, yellow, brown, black, green and orange feathers. This one is mostly orange and yellow, with hints of red and blue, and black stripes across the two biggest feathers. It looks nothing like any fly he’s ever seen in nature. More like a tropical bird. It’s a work of art. The hook at the end is a thick, black curl of metal with a small flare near the tip. Brutal, effective. “Did you make this?” 

“No. I bought all of this at a local tackle shop in Aberdeen. That one you’ve got is gorgeous but probably no good in summer, unless the river is higher than usual this time of year. We’ll want something lighter. Like that.” Draco points to a smaller fly with thin wisps of blue and grey feathers. “I enjoy tying flies, but I wanted to be sure we don’t break any laws, and the easiest way to do that is to shop locally. ”

Draco must mean Muggle laws, because Harry isn’t aware that wizards have laws about fishing. Still, he can’t imagine Draco worrying about Muggle laws of any sort, let alone fishing regulations. “Laws?” he says, hoping not to sound as incredulous as he is.

Draco doesn’t seem fazed by the question. He’s utterly matter-of-fact in his response. “The Muggles regulate fishing to protect the local populations. Salmon spawning seasons vary and so do behaviours, so the laws vary too. The Dee is open from late winter through the autumn. Summer isn’t the best salmon fishing here, but it’s in season. Some regions outlaw the use of particular lures, but it’s all fair game here.”

“If you’re allowed to pull fish out of the water, what difference does it make what lure you use to do it?” 

“The laws are designed to create balance. I said fishing is primal?” Harry nods, eager to finally get an answer to his earlier unasked question. Something about the way Draco is lit up as he talks, even in the grey light of the wet day around them, is mesmerising. “What I meant is that it’s the original hunt. Humans were hunters and gatherers long before they were farmers. But most of the hunting that humans do today puts us out of balance with nature. Fishing can be, done a certain way, almost as balanced a contest between predator and prey as it was before gunpowder, before steel, before even the more advanced stone weaponry. But once you start fishing during spawning season, or fishing with magic, which the wizards I sail with absolutely prohibit, you throw off that balance. We use nets at sea, but we never overfish a population beyond what it can sustain. There are many ways the contest can become so heavily weighted towards human success that we end up decimating fish populations.”

Apart from the fantastic notion that Draco Malfoy is talking about balance with nature, something else strikes Harry as incredible. “By humans you mean…?”

“Muggles and wizards. We all have the potential for balance and imbalance. Magic, in this case, can cause the ultimate imbalance.”

“I’d imagine wizards always had a leg up on their prey,” Harry says.

But Draco shakes his head. “There’s evidence that people had magic as far back as we can trace human history. It was used differently in different parts of the world. At least as far as I’ve been able to uncover, nearly all magic users in pre-historic times were healers. And not only healers of other humans, but healers of the natural world around them. Which means that magic wouldn’t have been used for predation.” Draco stops speaking abruptly, as if he’s just noticed how much he’s said. 

“Where’d you learn all of that?” Harry is fascinated, and absolutely confounded by Draco’s interests—in fishing, in nature, and apparently magical history. Pre-history?

Draco watches Harry for a moment, and then rocks back on his heels and sits himself down on the porch, pulling his knees up to his chest and clasping his strong forearms in front of him. He looks as though he’s holding something close and contemplating whether to let it go. He takes a few deep breaths, and Harry sees his jaw muscles clench and then relax. 

“I started to study wizarding history in different countries almost as soon as I left England. I was interested. I took notes. I haven’t… I’ve never shown anyone. But I took a lot of notes. And then I wrote. Book chapters, maybe. Not that any of it’ll ever be published. A comparative history of magic.”

“You’re a writer,” Harry says, feeling a gut-punch at his own failure. That isn’t remotely the most interesting part of what Draco is telling him. It’s only the part that hits him first, closest to the place of misery he’s been in for ages now. The other parts, the things Draco has learned, Harry can hardly wrap his mind around. “Would you show me? What you wrote?” 

Draco shakes his head and then looks out at the lawn, where the rain has slowed but not stopped. A heavy drip from the roof over the porch hits the steps below them, and the gutter at the side of the cabin is still releasing water from the earlier downpour. “Does it interest you? Or are you merely curious about whether I’ve changed?” 

Harry considers that. “Both, I think. You have changed. That’s obvious. So have I—”

“But no one needed you to change, Harry. No one’s been waiting for their saviour to become a better person.”

That’s true, Harry thinks. People seem determined to ignore the fact that he’s not the person he once was. “Do you believe everyone’s been waiting for you to become a better person?”

“I don’t believe anyone’s given me a thought. But the people who knew me then need me to prove to them I’ve changed before they can begin to take any real interest in who I am today.”

“You can’t know that. You haven’t been around enough to know that.”

“I know it because I have to keep proving it to myself.”

“Ah. Well, then,” Harry says, “that’s something else.” 

They sit on the porch and peer at the drizzle for a few minutes without speaking. Harry had watched Draco at the reunion. He can’t say why, precisely, but maybe it’s for the reasons Draco thinks. Maybe Harry’s been waiting fifteen years for Draco to prove to him that he’s changed. He’s always been sure he did the right thing testifying on Draco’s behalf after the war, but he’d been hurt by it, too. Draco walked away from him that day, from all of them, and Harry has been waiting for something ever since. He hasn’t been entirely conscious of it, but now that Draco says it, he feels the truth of it. 

Except no, that can’t be right. The thought is merely a remnant. A remnant of caring. A feeling he’s had to dredge up almost daily as he attempts to write his life story. Because he’d cared so much. He’d hated Draco, and also been drawn to him, and wanted him to be different.

Harry can barely find the energy to care about the things and people who should matter most to him now. He is not still worried about what kind of person Draco is, he tells himself. If he were, he wouldn’t have propositioned the man.

Draco is here, now. He’s stunning to look at. He also knows things. Things that make him interesting. He’d always been intelligent, and perhaps he’s focused his mind in productive ways since the war. All of that makes him a pleasant companion. Right here and now. And Harry has too tenuous a hold on his own life for him to worry about anything more than this moment. 

“Look, Draco. You don’t have to show me what you’ve written. I’m interested. That’s all. Right now, I’d love to go fishing. I’m not sure how much of a hunter I am, but I want to give it a try. That’s all I want.”

Draco raises his eyebrows in challenge at that, and Harry nearly blushes. Okay, that’s not all he wants. He had been contemplating repeat sex earlier, hadn’t he? Somehow they’ve waded into deep conversational waters, and the prospect of sex with the writer who’s studying comparative wizarding history is more daunting than the prospect of fucking Draco Malfoy, self-centred bastard turned Norse god-slash-fisherman. 

Draco plants his hands on the porch and pushes himself up, moving like he’s accustomed to using his body’s strength. He holds out a hand for Harry and pulls him up, his grip firm and his palm cool and rough and something in his touch tugging at Harry's magic. Harry remembers those callused hands on his body. “Whatever you want, Harry Potter,” Draco says.

____________________

They walk to the river, Harry carrying the rods over his shoulder and Draco carrying the heavy tackle box. They’ve tied small fly lures with double hooks to each of the lines, and Draco has explained the difference in each, and why the different lures are better for different conditions. It’s two miles to the river’s edge, and it rains on and off during their walk. Harry runs this path nearly every day; being on it is calming, even with Draco by his side, causing his magic to vibrate. He tries not to think about the last time they walked side-by-side to a water’s edge, or about Draco’s hands, or about the way some part of his magic seems magnetised to Draco.

Draco asks about the woods around them as they go. He seems interested in the proliferation of spruce and birch and the birds they’re home to. He mentions a wood in Finland where he goes in his free time, and a lake where he ice fishes. It’s all so unfathomable to Harry, the notion of Draco living outdoors, catching his own food and paying more attention to the species of trees around him than the bloodlines of the people he associates with.

And then it occurs to Harry that Draco must have a full life in Finland. He says he hasn’t been home since the trials. His life would naturally include friends. Maybe even a lover. Or a partner. It hasn’t occurred to him to ask, but the thought of it makes him inexplicably unhappy. He doesn’t want to know. He also can’t help himself. “Do you have good friends in Finland?” He tells himself it would be nice for Draco if he has someone.

“I have more acquaintances than friends, but a few people who’ve become friends. There’s a wizard, Akseli, who owns his own trawler and taught me how to work the fishing boats. Taught me to ice fish as well. He’s almost like family. I’ll be sailing with him at the end of the month.”

Harry wants to know more. He’s also aware that his curiosity is dangerous. It shouldn’t matter who Draco is or who is in his life. Letting it matter for even this tiny window of time can only confuse what he’d like to be simple between them. So he doesn’t ask. Instead, he asks about ice fishing and what it’s like on the trawlers, and Draco tells him about what sounds like a difficult life in detail as they approach the river and prepare to wade into the water.

There’s no one in sight on the river or the bank, and the sounds of the rain and flow of the river are broken only by occasional bird calls. The air is fragrant with spruce and new leaves. It’s peaceful and Harry has relaxed until, in between answering questions about his life at sea, Draco hands the shorter rod, the olive one, to Harry and steps behind him, wrapping his arms around Harry and positioning Harry’s hands on the cork handles. “Like this,” he says, and demonstrates how to manoeuvre the line with one hand while alternately controlling the reel and the pole with the other. He shows him how to let the line out and keep hold of it with a finger so it doesn’t pull away. With Draco cloaked around him, the river and the rain and the trees and the birds and the wet grass disappear. Harry resists pressing back against Draco, but feels the call of Draco's body, and can’t help but sink into the feeling of Draco’s hands on him again. 

They stand like that for what feels like too short an interval. As soon as Harry’s got a handle on how to manage the rod and line, and has begun to get a feel for the reel, Draco lets go of him and picks up the longer rod. The river isn’t as high as it was a month or two earlier, but it looks like it’s running fast from several days of rain. It’s still never higher than waist level at this bend in the river. Draco wades in nearly up to his shins, not too far from shore, and then instructs Harry to watch his casting motion. First he pulls about twenty yards of line out from the reel, letting the light fly float out on the downstream current of the river. He uses his arm and his wrist to flick his line and lure into a dancing whip over his head, a back and sideways loop that drops into the centre of the river on the forward motion. His movements are graceful, masterful. 

“There’s no weight on the line when you fly-fish other than the heavier line at the end, the tip, so you have to load the rod with energy to get the line to cast forward with a stop motion,” Draco says, demonstrating several times. “It’s a simulation of flight. Point the rod in the direction you want the fly to land, out in the centre of the current, before you flick it forward with your wrist.” And then he shows Harry how to get the same forward and backward motion with a low rolling loop, casting into the rushing water and dragging the line back, repeating the low dance above and just below the water. “You’ve got a floating line on that rod, which is easier to cast when you’re starting out. You see how mine sinks a bit at the end? Yours will stay closer to the surface.”

Harry watches for a quarter of an hour before Draco beckons him to wade into the river. He’s fairly certain he won’t be able to imitate the elegant dance of Draco’s fly lure, and worried that, even worse, he’ll get tangled in his own line. Draco meets him at the shore and leaves his pole on land, following Harry back out into the water. “It takes practice. Took me weeks to be able to get the fly in the water properly, and much longer to get good at it. Don’t worry about how it looks, just try to get a feel for it. We’ll do it together first.”

Harry braces himself to have Draco’s arms around him again and still has to suppress a full body shudder as Draco fits himself behind Harry and puts his hands over Harry’s on the rod. The waders don’t do nearly enough to mask the contours of Draco’s body. The overwhelming impression is one of solid muscle. 

“Relax,” Draco says, and moves one of his hands to Harry’s shoulder, pressing into the tight muscle there. “You need to bring your shoulders down. They’re up around your ears.” 

Harry doesn’t want to break it to Draco that he isn’t going to be able to relax as long as he’s captured in the man’s arms, but he does his best to bring his shoulders back and let go of some of the tension he’s carrying.

Draco has Harry pull the line out and drop it into the current, so that the lure swims out in front of them. Then he describes the motion, the need to bend the rod back over his head, turn towards the centre of the river and whip the line forward, before grasping Harry’s hands and moving him through the motion. The movement is sharp and has more strength behind it than Harry realised from watching Draco. Draco had made it look effortless, but Harry feels the exertion in the movement.

“Okay?” Draco asks in his ear. “Again?” 

Harry nods and Draco moves him through the motion again, and then again. After only four or five casts, Harry can feel sweat gathering in the small of his back. The misting rain is clammy, and Draco’s pragmatic embrace is enough to overheat Harry even without the physical strain.

After they’ve practiced a handful of casts, Draco asks, “Are you ready to try yourself?” He leaves his arms around Harry when he says it, his hands over Harry’s hands. Harry knows he’s going to move away in a moment. He closes his eyes for a brief second, feeling the electric connection between them and the hum of his magic reaching for Draco in all of the places they touch. After a deep breath, he opens his eyes and nods.

“Sure.”

Draco lets him go, and moves back and to the side. “Go ahead. Give it a try. We’re casting downstream, so let the current take the line a bit after it lands.”

Without Draco’s guidance, his line tangles behind him. And when he untangles it and tries again, his whip motion is weak and the lure plops into the water in front of him. He tries over and over, but at best he only manages to get the fly a couple of yards out. Except Draco keeps praising him, as though he isn’t failing miserably. “You’re doing great,” he says. “I know it’s frustrating, but you’re getting most of the motion. It just takes practice.”

Draco puts some distance between them and begins to cast at Harry’s side, aiming his line straight down the shoreline. Harry alternates between his own attempts and watching Draco. He improves very slightly, but after nearly half an hour, Harry’s arm begins to grow sore. He casts less and watches Draco more. Draco looks tireless; everything about his movement is strength and grace. He isn’t watching Harry, instead keeping his eyes on the water and the drop and pull of his line. His expression is focused but serene, a kind of being present that Harry only ever feels when he’s running.

When the muscles in his shoulder and forearm begin to throb, Harry wades back to the shore and sits with his booted feet in the water, turning his full attention to Draco.

“Giving up already?” Draco says, not taking his eyes off the direction of his cast.

“Just resting. When do we catch a fish?”

Draco face splits into a smile. “Impatient as I remember, Potter. Fishing is its own thing, and often doesn’t involve catching fish. But persistence is usually rewarded, even if it takes days.”

Harry is about to tell Draco just precisely what he can do with his days of persistence when Draco’s rod bows and the line pulls a couple of yards downstream in almost an instant. “Is that…?" 

Draco lifts the bowed rod vertically and holds the line to keep it from pulling further. “Spoke too soon. Come here, quick,” Draco says.

Harry leaves his rod on the bank and splashes to Draco’s side. “What should I do?” 

“You’re going to reel it in,” Draco says, and gestures with his chin for Harry to duck into the circle of Draco’s arms. Draco lifts the rod and rests the base of it into Harry’s hip, all the while keeping a taut hold on the line, the rod bowed nearly in half now. “You remember how to use the reel?” 

“Um, maybe?” There’s no time to find out, because Draco places the rod and reel in his hands, steadying him but letting him feel the full weight of the fish on the line. “Holy shit!”

“Bigger than I’d expect here,” Draco says. “Keep the rod in the air, let some line out, and then reel back. Don’t try to pull it in too fast. Let it run, and then pull it in, a little closer each time.”

Harry tries to follow instructions. The animal fighting for its life on the end of the line does ignite something in him he’s not felt in many years. That struggle for survival. Only this time his survival isn’t at stake. He recognises the enticing thrill of the battle, though, and only needs occasional correction from Draco’s skillful hands. Finally, the fish breaches the water in a leap, hook in mouth, and its tail swings wildly back and forth as Harry pulls it into the air.

“Good job!” Draco says, and he reaches around Harry to grasp the fish’s tail. It looks nearly two feet long and feels like it weighs a stone, though it’s probably not more than two kilos. “I’ve got it.”

Draco walks them to the shore quickly and uses the small club he set near the bank to dispatch the fish. Then he has Harry put the rod down so he can remove the hook from the fish’s mouth. It takes some work, but he frees the fly lure and lifts the fish with two hands for Harry to see. “You caught your first fish.” 

Harry can’t help but smile. “Well, you caught my first fish.”

“Bringing it in is at least half the battle, and most of the fun.” 

Harry can’t argue with that. There’s something unsettling about how exhilarating it was to battle the fish for its life. And win. 

Harry sits on the bank and watches as Draco guts the fish with a knife he pulls from the bottom of the tackle box. He makes a quick, clean cut down the centre of the fish’s stomach, cleans the guts out with his hands, and then uses the bottled water to wash his hands and rinse the fish, blood spilling into the wet grass.

“Why not wash it in the river?” 

“It might be superstition, but most fishers will tell you that if you put your catch’s blood in the water, you won’t catch another fish nearby for days.” 

“So, first you trick the fish into believing your lure is an actual fly, and then you trick the rest of the fish into believing their friend has gone on holiday, so you can continue to trick them with your fake fly?” 

Draco packs the fish away in the cooler. “Basically, that’s it,” Draco says, looking up at Harry and pinning him with his stare.

“So fishing is just trickery. I’m not sure I’m cut out for it,” Harry says, thinking what he’s not cut out for is sitting under the weight of Draco’s gaze.

Draco laughs at him. “Humans didn’t ascend to the top of the food chain because they have opposable thumbs. Or even because of their capacity for large-scale cooperation, although that helped. There are other cooperative species. Even other highly intelligent animal species,” Draco says. “What sets humans apart from the rest is guile. Our capacity for deception.”

Harry looks at Draco, watches the green surroundings reflect in Draco’s grey eyes. There’s mirth there. And he’s smiling. He’s enjoying this. “I’m relieved to know you haven’t entirely abandoned your Slytherin worldview.” 

“Slytherins are survivors. And also realists,” Draco says, and then the smile slides off his face. He’s quiet for a moment and adds, “I suppose that’s part of what made us vulnerable to Voldemort.” 

Harry is so surprised by Draco’s words that before he can stop himself, he answers, “And here I thought it was your long tradition of bigotry.” 

Draco doesn’t flinch. His mouth is in a grim line, but he nods. “That too.”

“Sorry, Draco. I didn’t mean—”

“Don’t apologise. I brought it up. And it’s true.”

Harry’s stomach plummets at the abrupt shift in mood. Maybe it’s impossible to expect the past not to hover near the surface between them. He wants to get back to fishing. Maybe back to Draco’s hands on him. But his skin is crawling with that buzzing energy he gets whenever he thinks too hard about the past, the way it has nearly every day since he started trying to write his life story. It’s like his magic is on alert. He can’t ignore the subject now that it’s alive. “Minerva’s done a lot to change things at Hogwarts,” he says. “So have some of your classmates. Former Death Eaters. They’ve helped at the school, and they’re raising their children differently. Things have changed, and I shouldn’t have suggested otherwise.”

“I’m glad,” Draco says. “I’ve heard as much from Pansy, but it’s good to have it confirmed.”

Harry tries to ground himself in the muddy grass under him and the water flowing nearby. “I’d like to keep practicing.”

Draco looks sombre, but he waves assent and goes back to it, giving Harry room to fish beside him. Harry’s arms are tired and his attempts are weak, and he’s lucky if he can land the lure in front of him at all. Draco’s line flies twenty yards out and rests only seconds before Draco whips it back and forward again in a loop. The sound it makes is almost musical, and Harry keeps losing focus, distracted by the large figure Draco cuts against the sodden landscape. 

“Concentrate,” Draco says when he catches Harry watching him. 

Harry turns back to the river and tries to put his energy into each cast. 

As he grows tired again, Harry’s magic begins to reach out for him, moving the line with form it lacked before. He tries to rein it in, but it starts seeking without his permission. His awareness shrinks down to the rod in his hand, the swish-swish of the line and flick of the lure, and then without realising it, to the fish running in the water around them. Salmon. 

And then, slowly, Harry feels them gathering to him, as though they’re called to his magic.

His control snaps like a fish line that’s been cut, and the vibrating energy breaks the surface and charges out of him. The last thing he remembers is the sound of Draco’s shout as salmon leap out of the water towards him.


	7. Chapter 7

At first, Draco doesn’t understand what he’s seeing. Movement next to him draws his attention just as a salmon leaps out of the river towards Harry. Draco’s eyes are on the fish. It isn’t until a second, and then a third fish leaps out of the water that Draco looks to Harry. Harry’s mouth is slack, his eyes wide, and he drops his rod into the current. Four fish jump at once, seemingly at Harry’s trembling figure. Harry is near the shore and several fish beach themselves. It all happens so fast. One second Harry looks stunned, the next there are close to a dozen fish flopping on the shore and Harry has dropped to his knees in the water.

Draco shouts, and some mix of fear and a confused version of anger propels him to move. He doesn’t know who or what to rescue first. There’s the rod, light enough to be taken downstream. There are the fish on the shore. And there’s Harry, with no sign of a wand about him, who has unquestionably cast a spell to pull the fish out of the water. An unthinkable use of magic in Draco’s world. He’s nearly at the shore, planning to rescue the fish first, when he realises Harry is not entirely conscious and close to sinking face first into the river.

Draco is behind him in two long, splashing strides. He lifts Harry by his armpits, and swings him up in his arms to carry him to shore. As soon as Draco has hands on Harry, he feels the tug of energy flowing through him. “Hang on. Hang on.” Is Harry having a seizure? Draco can’t tell. Harry’s eyes are open but he doesn’t seem aware of his surroundings.

He rushes to shore with Harry and lays him down, then turns his attention to the fish. He grasps two at a time and flings them back into the river. A couple more fish beach themselves while he’s working, and he has to move quickly to return them all to the river in time to save them. Even when he has them all back in the water, he can see glimmers of a school gathering near the shore where he stands next to Harry, nearly two dozen of them. “Shite!” He’s seen spells cast to catch fish, but he’s never seen behaviour like this. “Go away!” He thinks to pull out his own wand and cast a counter-spell, or Finite Incantatum, but he’s too worried to take a moment to do it, and not certain enough what would happen. To Harry or the fish.

He turns back to Harry and finds his eyes are now closed. Draco kneels down next to him and places his palm on Harry’s chest, relieved to feel the faint rise and fall. He also feels the waning energy emanating from Harry, not quite like any magic he’s ever known, but unmistakably magic nonetheless. “Harry? Can you hear me?”

Harry’s eyes flutter open and focus on Draco. “Oh, Draco. Oh no,” he says, his voice weak and filled with regret. “I’m so sorry.”

Draco’s anger subsides immediately. Harry is hurt, and sorry, though Draco doesn’t know what to do with Harry’s use of magic after everything Draco has told him today. “Will you be okay if I retrieve the rods?”

Harry nods, not moving from his position flat on his back in the wet grass.

Draco watches him for a moment longer, assures himself that there is steady breath passing in and out of Harry’s lips, and wades back into the water. The fish seem finally to have dispersed. If there are any lingering, there aren’t enough of them to be seen through the running water. He looks around to make sure there are no people about, and Accios first his rod and then Harry’s, which had floated a good thirty yards down river.

Once he has the rods secured and all seems well with the river, he returns to shore and Harry’s side. “Can you sit up?”

Harry levers himself up slowly with his hands behind him. “The fish,” he says.

“They’ll survive. You can’t beach salmon long, but they made it back in time.” Harry’s gaze is distant, and Draco has to encourage him to get to his feet. “What did you do, Harry?”

“I didn’t…” Harry breaks off and finally focuses on Draco. “Can we talk about this later?”

Draco’s anger threatens to return, but he’s spent the last fifteen years learning to question his most impulsive emotions and snap judgements. So he drops it. For now. “Can you walk?”

Harry nods and cautiously gets to his feet, looking unsteady but not dramatically ill. He doesn’t say another word, simply gathers the rods and helps Draco close up the tackle box. They walk together in silence for nearly a mile. Draco is confused and rattled, and feels like he’s owed an explanation. There’s something familiar about feeling wronged by Harry Potter. He’s so thoroughly trained himself to distrust that old, familiar emotion that he begins to question what he saw and even wonder if it was somehow his fault.

“Draco,” Harry says, breaking into Draco’s spiralling reverie. “I can see you’re upset. I promise you that was an accident.”

Draco halts abruptly. Harry stops a couple of steps ahead and turns back to him, a bleak expression on his face that only makes Draco feel more guilt for the fact that some part of him is truly angry. At Harry? At himself?

“How do you accidentally spell dozens of fish to behave that way? I don’t even understand what you did.” 

Harry shakes his head. “I don’t either, Draco. I wish I could explain. It wasn’t a spell, I promise. At least, not a conscious one.” Harry looks down at the ground at his feet and then up at the sky, avoiding Draco’s eyes. “I don’t always have control of my magic.”

“Since when?”

“Since… the war,” Harry says, though Draco could swear Harry was going to say something else.

“That’s a long time not to have control of something that could kill someone,” Draco says, still thinking about the fish.

“I know,” Harry says. He turns away from Draco, the rods sagging over his shoulder.

“Is that why you’re hiding out in Scotland?”

“No,” Harry says, his back still to Draco. “Well, at least not entirely. Maybe a little. It’s hard to explain.”

Draco is about to say _try _and then stops himself. Is it any of his business? Not remotely. 

“Nothing like that has ever happened before. I’ve never hurt anyone,” Harry says. 

“You nearly killed a dozen fish!”

Harry turns on him then. “We were fishing! You pull vast numbers of fish out of the sea with nets! You intentionally killed a fish today!”

“Not like that,” Draco says, and he has to grit his teeth not to shout. “Let me tell you something, Harry, it wasn’t spending time among Muggles that radically changed my view of the world. My father wasn’t entirely mistaken about them.” He can see Harry bristle, but he goes on, setting the tackle box and cooler down as he gets wound up. “Yes, they’re more clever than he gave them credit for, and more resilient, too. But they’re as dangerous as he said. Dangerous to themselves, to us, and most of all to the planet. What my father had terribly wrong was his understanding of wizards.”

Harry lets the rods slide off his shoulder and onto the ground as Draco talks. “The history he taught me, I think the only one he knew, was the narrowest view of British and European wizarding history that left out most of the world’s magic and all of our worst deeds. Travelling amongst magic people around the world taught me how wrong my father was. The indigenous people of the Americas have had magic since before they made it to North America, yet there were wizards among the British and Europeans who slaughtered them and took their land. Just as there were wizards among those who colonised Africa and Asia. There are American wizards overfishing the Atlantic and Pacific as zealously as any Muggles, and more dangerously, too, because their magic enables them to pull fish from the sea like you would mow down a wheat field.” 

Draco nearly spits out the words and Harry stands rigid in the face of Draco’s anger. Draco points back in the direction of the river. “That? What you just did? That is not fishing. Magic can create balance, and it can also be destructive. In that way we’re as human as Muggles and have as much potential for weakness and maliciousness as they have.” 

As soon as he finishes, he hears his final words and realises to whom he’s speaking. He hears the presumption in what he’s said. His fury deflates in an instant. Sometimes he hates himself. Harry is still rigid before him and unreadable. “Hell, Harry. I don’t need to tell you that.”

“No, you don’t.” Harry says. “I’d have thought the war proved that point years ago.”

“Of course,” Draco says. Of course, what an idiot he is. “I’m sorry.” He picks up the tackle box and cooler and walks past Harry, the familiar trickle of shame propelling him forward. 

Harry reaches out and stops him as he passes, wrapping his hand around Draco’s wrist. And Draco feels it now, the magic energy in Harry’s touch. He’s been so turned around, turned on, by Harry since Saturday that he’s attributed it to something between them. But it’s more than that. It’s something wild in Harry’s magic. 

“Draco. Don’t apologise.” Harry tugs on his arm until he meets Harry’s eyes. “You’re right. I swear I didn’t do that on purpose, but it’s possible I’m dangerous. I probably needed to hear it.” 

“You didn’t need a lecture.” Gods, he’s made a mess of this. “Maybe what you need is some help.” Harry doesn’t respond. His expression in reply is haunted. All Draco wants is to regain some control over his emotions, which are high. He isn’t used to feeling this way. “Why don’t we drop this and get you home. Out of the rain?”

Harry lets go of Draco, breaking the connection between them. He gathers the rods again and mutely begins making his way in the direction of the cabin with Draco following next to him. Harry looks lost in his shabby, oversized raincoat the colour of the grey sky above them, his head bowed and his gait stiff. Even like this, the sliver of profile Draco sees as they walk is outrageously handsome. Harry has scruff from what must be the better part of a week since the reunion, and as haunted as his expression is, the deep circles of sleeplessness are gone from under his vibrant green eyes. When Harry was animated—admiring the lures Draco bought in Aberdeen yesterday, struggling to cast his line, and reeling in their catch—he was radiant. Disorientated on the riverbank and now sulking home, he looks extinguished. Everyone Draco’s spoken with about Harry since he arrived nearly a week ago has told him the man is in trouble. It hasn’t sunk in until this moment that they might’ve meant more than merely that he’s become a bit eccentric and unsociable.

As they walk, Draco marvels again at how beautiful Harry’s chosen hideaway is, surrounded by a verdant wood, hillocks, and the bountiful River Dee. Harry’s cabin, too, seems to have all the potential to make a cosy home. But inside, Draco finds it as neglected and underfed as Harry himself. Not empty. But filled with unloved things. And Draco wonders if that’s what Harry feels like inside as well. He’s felt that way before himself, even surrounded by natural beauty here in Scotland, and in many other parts of the world. 

When they reach the porch of the cabin, Draco takes the rods from Harry and leans them back against the house. He sets the tackle box down on the porch as well. Harry watches him silently, not making a move to go inside. “I can leave now, Harry, if you prefer?”

“No,” Harry says, his voice quiet but the answer quick. “Please don’t.” 

“Okay. How about I cook us a late lunch?” He’d bet that Harry hasn’t eaten a bite today, and given that he didn’t know what day it was when Draco arrived, Draco has to wonder when he last ate. 

Harry nods and looks absently at the cooler Draco is holding. “I used to cook fish on Fridays. I think there was a Catholic somewhere in Uncle Vernon’s family.”

Draco isn’t sure what to say. He assumes Uncle Vernon is one of Harry’s Muggle relatives. He doesn’t know much about them. Anyhow, Harry looks like he needs a rest. “Let me cook for you.” 

Harry doesn’t respond, but starts to strip out of his sodden coat, waders, and boots, leaving them out to dry in the damp air instead of spelling them dry. Draco follows his lead and then they’re both standing in jeans and long-sleeved T-shirts, Harry’s considerably roomier than Draco’s.

He finds himself pulled into Harry’s orbit again, Harry’s green eyes pinning him even as he has the sense that Harry isn’t all there. On Saturday night, he let Harry convince him that no-strings sex was a reasonable alternative to a real conversation, and he’d be fooling himself if he didn’t admit he’s susceptible to the same argument again. He hasn’t for one minute forgotten what it felt like to have Harry’s mouth on his, to be inside him. And they’ve tried talking, haven’t they? Draco is deeply embarrassed by how much he’s said. If it weren’t for the fact that Harry is clearly struggling, Draco might make the move himself this time. Instead, he wills himself to pull his gaze away from Harry’s and lead them both into the cabin.

Once inside, Harry points Draco to the kitchen. For someone who doesn’t appear to eat much, it’s well stocked and functional. There isn’t much actual food, but there are oil and spices and seasoned cast-iron pans. Either someone bought all of this for Harry, or he knows how to cook. Not that it appears much cooking has gone on here recently. There are greens on their last legs in the fridge, which Harry says he bought on Friday before the reunion.

After showing him around, Harry leaves him to it, and Draco’s mood grows immeasurably lighter as he fillets and fries the salmon. There’s dust on most of the surfaces in the kitchen, except the kettle and the cupboard that holds Harry’s tea mugs. The pans are dusty, except one pot in the drying rack. So are the cupboards that hold the cooking supplies. But with a quick pass of a damp rag, Draco finds the kitchen welcoming. And soon the aromas of freshly caught fish seasoned the way he likes, and greens sautéed in garlic, fill the space that had felt wanting.

Draco finds three plates in the drying rack and wonders again when Harry last had a meal. He sets the table for them and goes looking for Harry to call him to lunch. He finds him on the sofa with a sheaf of parchment in his hand, not reading precisely, but looking at the words in dismay. “Food’s ready,” he says. And then, because something about Harry’s vulnerability begs him to reciprocate, he says, “You can read what I’ve written, if you like. About magical history.” 

Harry looks up at Draco, turmoil in his expression that Draco doesn’t understand. “Thank you. I’d like that.”

Draco has never shown his book chapters to anyone. He can’t imagine feeling more exposed, but he’s decided this is the right thing to do, so he goes to his knapsack. He carries the chapters with him almost always, shrunken and hidden. Now he pulls his wand from his jeans’ pocket and produces two chapters bound in string. “Don’t feel any pressure,” he says, handing them over to Harry. “You said you’d like to read them, but I won’t be offended if you find it boring.”

Harry takes the chapters reverently. “I’m fascinated, Draco.”

Draco shrugs at that, unfamiliar and uncomfortable emotions at the surface. “Let’s eat. Before the food gets cold.”

Harry brings Draco’s chapters to the kitchen table and sets them down beside him. Draco doesn’t love the idea of his work sitting so close to a table full of food, but he’s decided to trust Harry with it, so he lets it go. Harry eyes the food appreciatively, but doesn’t take a bite until Draco encourages him. When he does, his face lights up and he smiles at Draco as he chews. “Delicious.”

Draco takes a bite and agrees. “Thank the fish. Hard to mess up when it’s so fresh.”

Harry continues to eat in silence, and then turns his attention to the stack of bound parchment beside him. Without a word, without a wand, Draco watches as the string around the first chapter unties itself and the cover page drifts up and turns itself over on the table beside the pile. Harry begins to read, seeming to forget that Draco is there. He takes the occasional bite of food, but the pages turn themselves so carefully that there’s no worry they’ll get soiled.

Draco is torn between wonder at Harry’s effortless magic and self-consciousness at watching Harry read. It occurs to him that when Harry said he’s not always in control of his magic, he left out how absolutely in control he is capable of being. It isn’t that Draco can’t do any wandless magic, and he’s seen wizards more powerful than he is accomplish magic far more magnificent than the simple reading of a book. But there’s something in the way Harry thoughtlessly turned his attention to it and made it happen that is not quite like anything Draco has ever seen. And then he recalls the way their clothes had evaporated while he had Harry in his arms.

The memory makes sense in a way it didn’t at the time. It also reminds him how badly he’d wanted Harry in that moment. Still does.

He shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “Could you maybe wait?” he says.

Harry looks up at him. “Hm?”

“To read? Wait until I’m not watching. It’s nerve-racking.”

Harry looks down at the large stack of parchment with the small but growing pile next to it, and it’s as though he’s just noticed what he’s done, and that he’s done it in front of Draco. “Sorry. That was rude.”

“Not terribly. But I’d rather not watch.”

“I warned you I’m not much of a conversationalist these days.” 

Draco did come here hoping they could talk. But it’s almost certainly a self-serving desire, so he isn’t going to press Harry into it. “That’s fine. Why don’t I clean up and then I can leave you to it. I could come back to get the chapters tomorrow?” He’d like to have another go at the Dee. Even if Harry doesn’t want to join him, retrieving his chapters would give him an excuse to return.

Harry focuses on Draco then, and his hypnotic eyes sharpen like he’s seeing Draco again after the last couple hours of stress. “Don’t leave. I can read this later.” 

Draco considers this. He wants to stay. He likes being here. He can also feel the air thickening between them, the way it did so quickly when Harry propositioned him at the reunion. But Draco is aware of feeling… something… in a way he can’t remember, and he doesn’t know what to do with it. He’d been so lonely those last months at sea and now, in Harry Potter’s kitchen, he feels this humming thing sparked to life by a man who frankly scares him, and who’s so clearly not always entirely present himself. Draco has years of meaningless sex behind him to know that this would be something different. For him at least. And yet he can’t resist pushing on Harry’s invitation. “Why do you want me to stay?”

“Are you still upset? About the fish?”

Is he? “No. I shouldn’t have gotten angry. I overreacted. It would help if I understood what happened back there.”

Harry is quiet in response for long enough that Draco assumes he’s going to evade again. Finally, he says, “I don’t understand it myself. But my magic is jumpy around you. I think you can feel it.” 

“So it’s my fault?” Draco says, his tone defensive, even though there’s a part of him that’s relieved to know that Harry feels the same energy he does when they’re near each other.

Harry sighs and instead of answering, he reaches out and grasps Draco’s hand across the table. His palm is warm and soft, and Draco wonders if Harry minds the calluses that cover Draco’s work-hardened hands. There’s a warm energy that starts where they touch and travels up Draco’s arm, crawling up his neck and heating his face. “It’s not your fault, Draco. But I woke up this morning feeling grounded, and then I get close to you and there’s _this_. It’s… _more_.”

Draco is overwhelmed for a moment by the strength of his attraction to Harry, the way his wanting swamps him, like the way Harry’s magic is overwhelming him through his touch, up to his scalp and down through his groin. “I should go. I’m not helping.”

Harry’s grip tightens. “I think it would help, though. I slept, after. I felt so good. I won’t lose control.” 

Draco isn’t scared of Harry’s magic, not really. What scares him about Harry is what it would mean to give in to what he’s feeling. And he’s scared of doing damage himself. “Harry,” is all he can say, because even as he tries to talk himself out of it, his body is crying out to complete the connection Harry’s sparked by taking his hand. “And after?”

“You can stay. Or go. Whatever you want.”

Draco thinks he’ll want too much. Wanting anything is too much. But desire wins and Draco snuffs out the voice of self-preservation whispering to him to leave. “And what do you want, Harry?” He’d asked the same question on Saturday night, and Harry’s answer had been blunt. A part of him thrills at the prospect of being asked for something simple from Harry, something he can give.

Harry lets go of his hand, his hot eyes on Draco, lids growing heavy. He stands, still watching Draco, chair legs scraping as he pushes back from the table. He glances at the table and the remaining food and dishes disappear. Draco’s book chapters rearrange themselves into neat, bound piles and float out into the sitting room.

“I want you to contain me. Just for a little while, I want to be contained.”

Draco’s pulse kicks up to a frantic pace, sucking blood from his limbs and his chest and his head and racing it down, arousal so intense and sudden that he has to steady himself to stand. His balls ache at the image that flashes. Holding Harry, fucking him and holding him together at the same time.

“No magic,” he says.

Harry’s pupils swallow the green of his eyes and his breathing quickens so that Draco knows he’s guessed right. Harry nods.

“Say it. No Magic,” Draco demands.

“No magic.”

“You can control it?” Draco thinks Harry will promise he can regardless. 

“I will. I promise. If you’ll…” Harry closes his eyes.

Draco watches across the kitchen table as Harry tries to control his breathing. “If I’ll what?” 

“Be rough, a bit. Please,” Harry says, and he opens his eyes and starts rounding the table towards Draco, arms shaking as he brings the heat of his body so close that it feels like Harry is touching him head to toe, even with an inch between them. “It helps.” 

Draco can’t stop himself touching then. He runs the backs of his fingers down Harry’s stubbled cheek, grasps his jaw, and slides his thumb over Harry’s bottom lip. They close the inch between them and Draco’s racing heart and mind stutter over the throb of pleasure he feels at the pressure of Harry against him. It had been like this the last time, too, when their bodies met. Now he’s going to take his time.

He holds Harry’s jaw tight and presses their lips together while sliding his hand down the front of Harry’s jeans and massaging his cock through the denim. Harry bucks against him and groans into Draco’s mouth. Filthy. Draco licks his way into Harry’s parting lips and revels in the hot, wet slide of tongues. He holds Harry firmly in place while he explores with his mouth, nipping his bottom lip, across his rough cheek, running his tongue to Harry’s ear and up, over the sensitive skin there, just the way Harry did to him the other night.

The room is lit, and Draco can see every stunning inch of Harry clearly this time. When he steps back to lift Harry’s T-shirt over his unruly black hair, he watches his stomach pull in below his ribs and his skin stretch over lean muscles Harry must have from running. He traces both his hands up Harry’s flanks and then pins him with his back to the table, rubbing rough thumbs over both of Harry’s pink nipples, watching them harden. Harry trembles under his touch, a soft whine escaping as Draco bends them both, Harry’s back over the table, and licks around one nipple and sucks it into his mouth.

“Gods, Draco,” Harry says, shaking in a way that tells Draco it’s taking tremendous control for his legs not to buckle. Draco has to drop a hand to his own throbbing erection and palm the length to get some control himself. He’s desperate to rip their clothes off and plunge inside Harry, but Harry asked him for something and he wants to give it.

He lets up on Harry’s nipple, soothing it with his tongue before nipping up to Harry’s neck and working Harry’s jeans open. His own hands shake slightly as he slides them under Harry’s pants to grab his tight arse and finally bring their cocks together for rough friction through their clothes. Harry is panting against him, canting his hips in tiny thrusts, the only movement he can manage trapped against the table with Draco gripping him tightly. “So needy,” Draco says in his ear, and pushes his middle finger into Harry’s crack to rub over his hole. Harry bucks again at the contact and then sags against Draco, begging Draco with every muscle of his body.

Harry doesn’t speak, but the sounds he makes are wanton, whimpering, moaning sounds, and Draco can’t wait to get inside and make him scream. 

First, he needs to get their clothes off. He’d avoided exposing himself completely in the dark at the reunion, but he’d rather Harry see him than turn away. Draco eases Harry out of his clothes, helping him step out of jeans and pants and slipping off his socks. He loves doing this with his own two hands, even more than he loves pulling a fish out of the water. When he’s done, he steps back and admires the gorgeous man in front of him, sharp angles, taut muscle, and a long cock, hard and red and leaking against Harry’s stomach. Draco’s own erection twitches at the sight. 

He forces himself to make eye contact with Harry as he pulls off his own clothes, one piece at a time. He doesn’t make a show of it, but he doesn’t hide, and he watches Harry’s eyes slide over his chest and discover the faint silver scar there where Harry cursed him. And then down his arm to the faded smudge of the Dark Mark, almost indistinguishable except to someone who knows exactly what it is.

“It’s almost gone,” Harry says, his voice still thick with desire.

“There will always be a mark there,” Draco says, because there will be, and it’s important to him to say it.

Harry nods, but his gaze moves over Draco like a caress, and he sees Harry struggle to pull in the magic he so clearly wants to let loose. His eyes linger over Draco’s cock and balls, erect and heavy, reaching out for Harry. “Gods, Draco.” 

Draco shivers at the sound of Harry’s voice, the awe in it. It’s all he can do to step away and locate the olive oil on the counter.

“Turn around,” he says, and Harry does, slowly, his hands planted on the table and his thighs tight against the edge. 

Draco pours oil over one hand before flattening his dry palm between Harry’s shoulder blades and pushing him down on the table. Harry’s arse is in the air and prick crushed under him. He’s a gorgeous sight, and Draco kicks his legs wider to get a view of his sweet little hole. It’s tempting to get down on his knees and worship it with his mouth, but Harry asked to be contained and that would be cruel.

Instead, Draco slides his hand into the hair at the back of Harry’s head and pins him to the table, flushed cheek against the wood and chest heaving. And then Draco drapes himself heavily over Harry’s back, holding him down, Harry’s head fitting under his chin so that Draco hears every breath and every whimper Harry makes.

“You tell me to stop and that’s it,” he says. Harry’s magic could likely overpower Draco in an instant, but he doesn’t want Harry to have to resort to it.

He feels Harry try to nod under him, but he can’t move with Draco’s grip on his head and body smothering him. “Say it, Harry.” 

“You’ll stop,” Harry rasps out, and Draco is so overcome by the desperation in Harry’s voice that he leans up enough to get an oil-slicked finger into Harry’s hole, groaning himself at the soft heat. He pushes in through slight resistance, but Harry opens easily for him. Draco fingers him slowly at first, working him open further, using his thumb to massage the muscle and finally pressing up at the sensitive gland. Harry’s whole body convulses under him, still pinned by Draco’s hand on his head but racked with sensation as Draco massages over his prostate relentlessly. Draco sees a tear escape Harry’s eye, but the only sounds falling from his lips are stuttered cries of tortured pleasure.

He works in a second finger, making sure Harry’s stretched for him, relishing the feeling of Harry’s body spasming under him. His own cock is desperate for more friction, and Draco leans forward as far as he can, rubbing himself against the small of Harry’s back so that each time Harry’s body vibrates under him it sends a jolt of pleasure down to his balls, threatening his own control. “Are you ready for me?” he whispers into Harry’s ear, nipping at the lobe as he says it. 

“Please, please,” Harry cries, his voice wrecked. Draco is so overcome he almost loses sight of his goal.

“Don’t move,” Draco says, and peels himself away from Harry just long enough to slick up his cock and hook his foot around the wooden armchair that was pushed away from the table. He pulls the chair behind him and then positions himself behind Harry, pinning him again with a strong hand to the back of the head. Even in profile, Draco can see Harry’s eyes are glazed over and he’s barely clinging to consciousness. 

He lines himself up and presses in, the tight heat even more incredible than he remembers. His whole body goes rigid with the need to explode as he pushes past Harry’s rim and deeper inside of him. And then, when he’s nearly balls deep, he slides the hand that’s pinning Harry under his chest and wraps him in both arms, raising him up off the table and sitting him down on Draco’s lap in the chair behind him. 

Harry cries out as his full weight comes down on Draco, impaling him on his cock. Draco holds him tight. Harry’s crushed against him, back to front, and can only squirm at the massive intrusion. Deep shocks of ecstasy spin out from Draco’s groin up into his chest and his limbs, curling his toes. His cock is so deep inside Harry he feels like he’s the one contained, surrounded, enveloped.

He rocks Harry slightly at first, calming him, letting him get used to the intensity of his entire weight on Draco’s cock. Harry’s thighs tremble and he’s slick with sweat. After several sharp cries, the cries turn softer, almost cooing little whimpers as his body adjusts. “Okay?” Draco asks. He knows Harry asked for rough, but he needs to know this isn’t too much. It shouldn’t hurt, not as open as he was, but Harry is so far gone it’s hard to tell that he isn’t in as much agony as ecstasy. 

His head nods against Draco’s cheek and he lets out a low, groaning, “Mmm.”

“Can you feel my cock in your throat?” Draco thrusts his hips up into Harry as he says it, bouncing Harry in his lap so that there’s a slight rise and slapping fall back down onto his lap. Harry moans and shivers, and even that tiny friction is such a jolt to Draco’s control that he has to still himself to keep from coming.

“I’ve got you,” he says, and he does. He has Harry from the inside out. Harry’s kept to his promise not to use his magic, but it is pulsing through him and through Draco at the same time, an electric saw of energy that’s friction of its own in every place they meet. 

When Harry starts squirming on his cock, Draco stills. Pinning him tighter around the chest, he drops one hand to Harry’s erection and gives it a rough stroke. Again Harry bucks in his arms and Draco stills him, holds him fast, soothes him.

“Harry, I want you to be still.” Harry’s eyes fall shut then as Draco starts to play lightly with his beautiful cock. 

He massages the head, pulls Harry’s foreskin back, and lets his thumb slide around the wet glans. He rubs his callused fingers up and down the length, flicks him, and occasionally grasps him hard and jerks him just enough to make his whole body stiffen with yearning in Draco’s arms. Draco feels every muscle in Harry’s body straining to move as Draco tortures him softly. Harry endures it for a minute or two before he begins to pant and beg. “Draco, please, please… oh gods, please…” 

Draco doesn’t relent. He plays too lightly with Harry’s leaking, straining, red erection, reaching down and massaging his balls where they’re tight against Draco’s thighs. He bounces Harry on his lap to hear him cry out and to revel in the deep penetration that has them in its grip, fondles him some more, and struggles to hold onto his own control long enough to give Harry what he needs.

Finally, something gives and Harry starts straining against Draco’s grip. “I need… Draco, I need you… please.” Harry’s voice cracks and Draco shushes him, calms him. He leaves off fondling Harry and wraps him tightly in two arms until Harry is shaking and heaving, but quiet. 

“I’ll take care of you,” Draco says. He lifts them both, working hard to stay steady on his own feet as he bends Harry over the table again. Holding him with one hand to his back, Draco pulls out slowly and thrusts back in, savouring the friction his body has been craving and the sigh of pleasure from Harry.

He rocks into him slowly at first, and then picks up speed. He promised rough. A little rough. So he kicks Harry’s legs further apart and slams into him, angling until Harry screams and he knows he’s found that spot. He pounds him there, over and over, hitting his prostate and shoving Harry roughly against the tabletop.

He feels his own orgasm moving towards its peak, and exhales heavily in an attempt to hold onto control long enough to get Harry there, and then before he can fully exhale, Harry is screaming out his climax and clenching around Draco. It’s like someone has grabbed Draco’s balls and wrung his orgasm out of him; he comes so hard into Harry’s stretched hole, his final strokes slick with come. Harry’s arse tugs at him, his muscles tightening around Draco even as he collapses over Harry’s back. “I’ve got you, Harry,” he says, even though he isn’t sure who has him.

He lies draped over Harry for a few moments, wanting to fulfill his promise but needing to make sure Harry is okay. He whispers in his ear, over and over, “You’re okay, Harry. Tell me you’re okay,” and finally Harry’s eyes open a sliver and he nods. 

“So good, Draco. So good,” he says, and then his eyes are closed again and an aftershock shakes his body and Draco’s above it.

Draco pulls out slowly and helps Harry up off the table, inspecting him in the light of the kitchen as he does. Red marks on his chest and at his hips will likely bruise, and his cheek is red under the stubble from the scrape of the table, but he doesn’t look seriously hurt. He curls himself into Draco’s arms when he’s finally standing on unsteady legs and says only, “Bed.” 

Draco embraces him, nuzzles his temple and lets Harry’s hot skin on his bring him down from the high of orgasm and the connection he felt. He’s tempted to ask Harry again if he’s okay, but he resists. Instead, Draco lifts him and carries him to his room.

Harry’s bedroom is dim, the only light from the drizzly outdoors, and the bed is unmade. Draco lays him in it and Accios his wand. He spells Harry clean, then uses healing magic to ease the bruising. Harry lies pliant under Draco’s ministrations until he moves lower with the intention of soothing Harry’s abused hole. Harry rolls over on his back, and even in the grey light, Draco feels caught in Harry’s heavy gaze.

“Don’t. I like it. I want to feel it.”

Sitting on the edge of the bed next to Harry’s supine figure, Draco is wrung out and uncertain all of a sudden. No one has ever put themselves in his hands quite the way Harry just did, and Harry’s the last person in the world he’d expect to trust him like that. It’s overwhelming to have been given that trust. But he doesn’t trust Harry, not completely. Not to be honest if he’s hurt, at least. The man he’s looking down at now is not well, in more ways than one. It’s easy to get carried away by his attraction for him, by Harry’s demanding energy and blunt desire. By Harry’s curiosity and his unusual combination of magnificent power and vulnerability. It isn’t that Draco has no experience with mixing pain and pleasure either. It’s the fact that Harry doesn’t want him to see his pain that worries Draco.

“Will you sleep?” he asks.

“I think so,” Harry says, and clasps his hand over Draco’s on the bed. “For a bit. You can stay.”

It’s so tempting. The thought of curling up behind Harry and holding him while he sleeps tempts him in a way that such intimacy never has. But he needs some space to think, and he’s afraid his judgement is radically bent at the moment. “I promised to have a late supper with my mother. I’ll come back tomorrow for the book. We could fish again, if you’d like.”

Harry’s slack features arrange themselves into a smile. “Maybe. I should probably work.” 

“Right, of course,” Draco says, and even though Harry is asking him to stay, there’s a part of him that feels dismissed. Probably because it’s what he expects. He’s been jarred out of his apathy so violently that he’s having trouble recognising his own emotions. There’s feeling there, though, unexpected and raw and tangled with the past. 

Harry squeezes his hand before letting go, letting one last zip of electricity pass between them.


	8. Chapter 8

It’s dark again when Harry wakes, alone in his room. This time he’s pretty sure it’s actually night. He looks up and sees the time before him, not yet three in the morning, without speaking the spell. He’s exquisitely sore, even despite Draco’s healing magic. And he feels rested, too. It couldn’t have been later than five o’clock when Draco left, and he’s been asleep since. 

He stretches in his bed, cataloguing the places that ache and remembering how each twinge of pain got there. His erection tents the light blanket Draco draped over him before leaving, and Harry wonders if he could come from memory alone. No one has ever gotten Harry so right. He hadn’t been sure what he was asking for when he asked Draco to contain him, but Draco instinctively knew and screwed Harry within an inch of his life. He’s never been held like that, consumed like that, from the inside out. His balls throb when he remembers the way he was speared on Draco. He was so helplessly lost as Draco staked him to his lap and tortured him with too soft fondling at the same time. 

The memory spurs his arousal and he shoves his hand under the blanket, taking himself in hand. He comes urgently after only a few strokes, and Draco’s name escapes on an exhale when he does. Bloody hell, he’s in trouble. 

But he doesn’t have energy, or time, for that matter, to dissect his recent, indisputably outrageous decision-making where Draco Malfoy is concerned. With more consecutive sleep than he’s had in over a year and some of his sexual tension released, Harry accepts that it’s time to get to work. At the very least, he needs to decide whether it’s worth even trying to put something he’s written into shape for the publisher.

He shuffles to the shower, washing away the traces of Draco left on his body, and lights a fire in the sitting room after he’s dressed. His intention is to contemplate his own scribbles, but Draco’s two book chapters catch his eye, neatly bound in string on the end table by his sofa, where he’d sent them just before—No, he can’t think about that. 

He does think of Draco’s words, and how the pages he’d begun to read captured his attention immediately. It’s still night. The earliest light is already shading the sky at this time of year, but it’s not yet four in the morning. It’ll be a day or two before Wanda checks in on him. So he makes himself a cup of coffee and succumbs to the temptation. He brings his coffee and Draco’s first chapter to the sofa, and begins to read. 

The first chapter is an overview of the breadth of magical history, from the meagre evidence of magical use gathered by anthropological archaeologists studying humans whose time pre-dates written record, to the most modern magical practices around the world today. What Draco has written, foremost, is a sweeping indictment of the way magical history is taught in most British and European schools of witchcraft and wizardry, with a particular focus on the way that myopic approach led to pure-blood bigotry and the rise of Dark Magic over the past century. Draco’s prose is crisp and trenchant. He doesn’t scold, or demean, or blame anyone in a way that might put a defensive Hogwarts history professor’s back up. He even manages a little flattery for Bathilda Bagshot, while quietly eviscerating the small-minded view that her History of Magic was ever intended to be THE history of magic. He compliments the book as an engaging but narrow study of a particular passage in England’s magical story. Nothing less and nothing more.

Harry is alternately charmed, awed, and incensed by the picture Draco draws of what could be known, and how little of it most magic users in Britain and the better part of Europe are taught.

He picks up the next chapter the moment he finishes the first, eager to read what’s titled _Early Magic and Migration_. Snug on the sofa, Harry loses himself in the fruits of Draco’s fascinating research, curiosity sparked in a way he can’t recall since he sought to unravel the conundrum of how to defeat Voldemort. And that is in the back of his mind as he reads. The fact that what he lacks as a writer isn’t merely skill, though he certainly lacks that. It’s curiosity in his subject. Because his own life has become exceedingly dull as a subject to him. It has been since he chose—a choice under duress, no choice at all—to live. He’s spent the intervening years trying to find reason beyond the destruction of Voldemort to remain interested in his own life. He’s tried and failed. Meanwhile, here is evidence of a mind so curious, so alive, to have spent those same years seeking and solving mysteries even greater than Harry’s singular, defining challenge.

It pains him to do it, but Harry scrounges up the sheaf of his own rambling once he’s finished reading Draco’s work, and forces himself to look at the product of his months of effort. The conclusion he draws after what must be an hour or two of reading, hands dug into his overgrown hair, neck stiff and gut churning, is inevitable.

He’s still on the sofa, surrounded by Draco’s book and his own miserable words, trying to work out how to approach the subject with Draco, when the man himself knocks on his door.

“Harry?” Draco asks, peeking his head around the doorframe before entering. “You’re up. I’m sorry, I would have firecalled but I wasn’t sure…”

The sight of Draco leaves Harry breathless for a moment. He grows more beautiful every time Harry lays eyes on him. He’s as simply dressed as he was yesterday, and dry this time. In short-sleeves, the smudge of the Dark Mark nearly unrecognisable along his tan and muscled forearm. Harry notices sun penetrating the translucent curtains that hang at the far side of his sitting room. It’s the start of a lovely day. And the man who turned him inside out yesterday, and then again this morning with his words, is shuffling at the entrance of his house like he isn’t sure he’s welcome.

“Come in. I’ve been up a while.”

Harry watches Draco’s expression as he takes in the piles of parchment surrounding him and waits to hear how Draco will open the subject.

“If I’m interrupting…?”

He’s so polite. Even after a hefty dose of it over the past couple encounters, it’s still unnerving. “Not at all. Please sit,” Harry says, gesturing to the only unburdened chair in the room. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Draco looks wary at Harry’s invitation, but sits in the empty chair. He’s nervous, Harry realises, and although it’s incomprehensible given what Draco’s written, Harry reminds himself that Draco said he’s never shown anyone his work. Astounding.

“Did you finish?” Draco asks, pointing to the chapters which remain unbound, but which Harry has neatly restacked.

“I did.”

Draco shifts in his chair, regarding Harry with a question he can’t seem to bring himself to ask. Some immature relic of Harry’s adolescence wants to watch Draco squirm, but he’s too nervous about the conversation ahead to put it off any longer.

“Draco, I’m amazed. You have to finish this book,” he says. “You have to publish it.” 

Draco doesn’t answer immediately. He looks like he’s considering his words. Finally, he says, “I hope to finish it someday. I enjoy writing it. But it’ll never be published.”

“Why not? It’s bloody brilliant,” Harry says. “And more importantly, we need this book.”

“I should think you’d appreciate that I’m the last person anyone wants lecturing England’s wizards about their feeble view of magical history,” Draco says, slipping into that upper-crust tone Harry remembers so well from school. The Draco he spent the day with yesterday had lost the gilded edges to his speech, like his years away from England had loosened his tongue in the same way they seem to have loosened everything else about him. He’s stiff again now, though.

“I honestly can’t think of anyone better suited to the job.”

Draco’s expression registers surprise, but he doesn’t reply.

“This is your decision, but you’re talented, and you’ve obviously done loads of research,” Harry says. He should have worked out a better approach to what he’s about to ask of Draco. So far, being direct has turned out well for him. He’s gambling that it will again. “I hope you finish the book. It would be a terrible waste not to. And a loss. But in the meantime,” he takes a deep breath, knowing what he’s proposing is insanity, “I want you to write my autobiography.” He would have bitten the head off anyone who’d suggested it even forty-eight hours ago. But right now, he desperately wants Draco to say yes. “Will you do it?”

Draco blinks at him, expressionless, until the blankness morphs into something resembling… offense. “Are you joking? I fail to see the humour.”

Merlin. “I’m not joking. Someone is going to write this book, and it isn’t going to be me. If I can’t find someone I trust, they’ll hire a hack to piece together whatever story they like from the bollocks they find in back issues of the Daily Prophet.”

“Are you unhinged? If you’ve held out against a ghostwriter, why… what do you mean ‘someone you trust’?”

Harry isn’t dense. This is a lot for him to wrap his mind around, too. “Draco, I don’t know what happened yesterday at the river. But you already know more than I’ve told anyone about the way my magic feels these days. You’ve felt it yourself.” And then there’s the reason he thought it was safe to proposition Draco in the first place. He has to choose his words carefully, because he was wrong about one thing. Draco isn’t selfish, not the way Harry had assumed. Harry is still convinced he can listen without pity. He might have reacted any number of ways when Harry let his magic slip yesterday, but the way he did react was what Harry needed. Draco sought to understand. He was even angry. But there wasn’t a trace of sadness. If Harry is going to tell his life story to someone, it can’t be a stranger who will sensationalise it. And it can’t be a friend, who might pity him for it. “I need someone who isn’t going to cry for me,” he says.

Draco appears stunned into silence at that. He turns his handsome face out towards the curtained windows and then closes his eyes. Harry watches him, straining to argue his point, but letting Draco think it through himself. Draco’s almost certainly going to say no, but from the moment Harry latched onto the idea about an hour ago, he determined to throw every possible argument for mutual benefit at Draco.

Draco opens his eyes and turns them on Harry. “Aside from all the other reasons this is an absurd suggestion, has it occurred to you that a not insignificant part of your life story intersects with mine, and that you’re asking me to write it from your point of view?”

That had occurred to Harry, fleetingly. It’s possible he hasn’t thought it through, but his mind is set. “If you’re the author of the book, then it won’t be entirely my point of view. I certainly want to read every chapter before it goes to the publisher, but it would be a collaboration.”

“And what would be your part in this collaboration?”

“I’d tell you my story,” Harry says, feeling rather pathetic but still determined not to let the idea go. “But your name would be on it. Harry Potter’s autobiography—or biography if you like—authored by Draco Malfoy. Co-authored. Whatever you prefer. Obscurus will love it!” He’s loath to capitalise on the sensational nature of his previous nemesis writing his life story, but there’s no question it’ll make selling the idea to Obscurus easier. 

“My name can’t go on your autobiography, Harry. Under no circumstances.” 

“Why not? You could establish yourself as a writer. It would open the door for you to publish your own book.” Harry thinks that part of his plan is genius.

“I’m not a writer. I’m a fisherman,” Draco says, his voice brittle and his expression disturbed.

Harry isn’t sure he understands what’s so upsetting about the idea to Draco, but the last thing he intended to do was insult him. “I know you’re a fisherman. I respect that. You’re also a writer. I just finished reading two chapters by one of the most engaging writers I’ve ever read. That was you.”

“I don’t remember you being much of a reader at all.”

“I’m not!” Harry says. He’s not shy to admit it. “But that’s the point. It takes a special talent to capture my interest. People can have more than one talent.” 

“How would this collaboration even work? You live in Scotland and I live in Finland. In a month I’ll be back at sea.”

He’s thought about this as well, though the details of how he’d make it work are thin. “I know this is a lot to ask of you on your holiday. You can have every penny of my advance in return. Honestly, you can have every penny they ever pay me for this fucking book as far as I’m concerned. You said you’re here until the end of the month. If we could produce one chapter while you’re here, preferably in the next few weeks, I think that would buy me time to work out the rest. It would be a job, there’s no getting around that, but I’d find a way to make it possible for you to do without interfering with your next sail.”

Draco’s resistance is weakening, he can tell. It’s tempting to pounce on his faltering resolve with a barrage of additional promises, but Harry senses that Draco is someone who needs to find his own way to a decision. Draco stands then and paces closer to Harry. As Draco gets nearer, Harry’s magical energy reaches out without his permission. He has to concentrate to pull it back. He must show Draco he can be in control, or this’ll never work.

Draco stops a couple of feet from where Harry’s sitting on the sofa. “Tell me again why you want this.” 

For a split second, Harry’s brain fritzes and he’s back by the lake in the dark needing to explain to Draco why he wants to get fucked. He assumes he’s going to have to do better with an explanation this time. “You said yesterday I was going to have to sort out what to do about the book eventually. You were right. And I have.” 

Draco is about to interrupt but Harry waves him off. “Let me finish. Whether you agree to do this or not, I have to accept that I’m not capable of writing the book myself. I’m a terrible writer. Someone other than me is going to write it. I have two choices: it will either be a stranger, or it’ll be someone I know. The thought of unloading my life story to a complete stranger is unbearable, and of course if I don’t collaborate, what gets written will be fabricated nonsense. Equally unbearable. That leaves someone I know. Until I read your chapters this morning I would have said I don’t know any writers. It turns out I do. Or I do now. And yes, it’s complicated because of our history, but anyone I know who agrees to write this, to listen to me tell this story from my perspective, is going to be overly invested. At least you and I have fifteen years of distance between us. And in some ways, the fact that we’ve never been friends makes this easier for me. Because I don’t have anything to hide from you.”

Halfway through his speech, Harry could swear that he’s convinced Draco, and then he watches as Draco’s expression grows troubled. He’s not sure what he said that caused the shift, but everything he’s said is true. He hopes it’s enough.

Draco doesn’t respond. He steps to the sofa and leans over to pick up his introductory chapter from where it sits next to Harry. He holds the pile of parchment up to his face, sniffing the pages, and then hugs it to his chest. Harry has no idea what’s going through his mind, but there’s no question that something about Harry’s request stirs feelings bigger than the mere imposition on his free time.

Finally, Draco says, “I’ll write you one chapter while I’m here. I can’t promise more than that. I’ll help you buy some time. Then we can decide whether it’s an arrangement we want to continue. I don’t want you to tell your publisher I’m working on it with you. If they’ll give you a few weeks, I can write you an opening.” 

“That’s fair,” Harry says, feeling immeasurably lighter already at Draco’s assent.

“I’ll do this, but I have some conditions,” Draco says. He sets his chapter down on the end table and crouches in front of Harry, catching him at eye level and placing his hands on Harry’s thighs. The touch and the proximity immediately send Harry’s pulse into overdrive. His body is acutely aware that this is the same man who possessed him so thoroughly yesterday. ‘Conditions’ should worry him, but instead all he can think is, _yes._

“I don’t want a penny of your advance—”

“That’s absurd, you’ll be doing all the work!”

“I don’t need your money and I don’t want to argue about it,” Draco says, firming his grip on Harry’s thighs. The authority in his tone is intoxicating, even if the words are infuriating. Harry decides he can have this argument later. Draco has agreed, and there’s very little Harry won’t concede in return.

“Okay,” he says.

“Second, you have to be honest with me. I’m not getting dragged into lying for you about your past. You agreed to this. No one can force you to divulge what you don’t want to divulge, but I’m not agreeing to write fiction.” Draco pins Harry with his grey eyes as he says this, and all Harry can do is nod. He isn’t sure yet how much he’ll be able to bring himself to share, let alone share with Draco, but he knows it’ll be useless if he doesn’t try.

“Finally.” Draco says, and he runs one hand up the inside of Harry’s thigh until it’s just shy of nudging his cock under his sweatpants.

Harry’s already half hard from having Draco so near, and the slide of Draco’s hand is an invitation to his body for _more_.

“Finally,” Draco repeats, “no more sex.” And with that he removes his hands and stands, cutting off that goading connection.

It’s pathetic, but Harry can’t help his stuttering reply. “No more sex… ever?” He cringes at the whine he hears in his own voice.

Draco grins but he doesn’t look happy. “It would be unethical. I’m not sleeping with you and writing something so personal about you at the same time. As I assume the sex was meant to be a temporary arrangement anyway, I think now’s as good a time as any to end it.”

It might simply be the fact that Draco deliberately turned him on before setting this condition, or it might be that Harry’s been spoiled by two of the most satisfying sexual encounters of his life. Whatever the reason, he can’t help but feel the condition is unfair. And ethics? What the hell business does Draco Malfoy have telling him about ethics? 

Okay, that’s petty. Draco has clearly developed a moral compass. But how could sex possibly hurt in this situation? He’s about to argue his case when Draco wags his finger at Harry. “I can see you looking for a loophole. I don’t need to explain this to you, Harry. I’ll do this for you. I’ve told you my conditions. Either you agree to them or you find someone else to write for you. If you choose to go with someone else, I’ll be more than happy to spend the remainder of my holiday as I’d intended.”

Well, fuck. “I personally have no ethical objections to mixing sex with my autobiography, but I’ll honour your conditions.”

“Then we have a deal.” Draco reaches down and shakes Harry’s hand, and even that platonic gesture sets Harry alight with yearning. This is not going to be easy. Not any part of it. “I’d hoped to fish a bit this morning. If you don’t mind, I’d still like to do that. It helps.”

Harry doesn’t seem to have the latitude to mind about much in this situation, so he shrugs, “Whatever you want.”

Draco doesn’t move, staring down at Harry. “Maybe you’d come with me? You can fish, or not. We could talk. It would help for me to have a sense of what we’re working with. Where you’d like to start." 

It’s that or sit around second-guessing the bargain he’s just made. He imagines even on a run, he’s likely to obsess. So he agrees.

__________________

Draco has left the fishing gear with him, he supposes because there’s nowhere to fly-fish in London. They set out much as they did yesterday, in waders and boots, no coats this time. Harry takes the rods and Draco carries everything else. The grass is still wet from the previous day’s rain, but the sun is strong and it’ll be dry by noon. Harry would be happy to hear more about Draco’s life in Finland, about the fishing boats and ice fishing in the winter. Instead, Draco peppers him with questions about the last fifteen years of his own life. 

He’s asked for this. He understood what he set himself up for by asking Draco to write for him, but he still isn’t prepared for how it makes him feel to describe how little he’s accomplished since the war. He’d stayed on at Hogwarts for nearly four years. No one had needed him there. Not really. Minerva and Hagrid and the rest of the faculty had more help rebuilding than they knew what to do with. But he’d needed to be there. And he enjoyed mentoring the students, just as he’d enjoyed mentoring Dumbledore’s Army.

“Why’d you leave?” Draco asks. It’s a good question, and one Harry has asked himself often.

“I’d always wanted to be an Auror. Everyone expected it, and I guess I expected it of myself.”

So he moved to London, into Grimmauld Place, and began Auror training at the Ministry. “I fixed up the house so Teddy could visit, and got to know Andromeda. Your mother a bit, too.”

“Mother tells me you gave the house to Andromeda,” Draco says. Which means Draco’s been talking about him with Narcissa. Or the other way around. Either way, it amounts to the same thing. He’s not sure how he feels about that. But there’s no reason Draco shouldn’t know. Soon, he’ll know everything.

“Technically, I gave it to Teddy. But he was six at the time, so it’s Andromeda’s home too. It’s the Black family’s house after all, and I didn’t need all that space. That house never liked me anyway.”

He sketches his years at the Ministry in the briefest terms, reluctant to turn himself inside out.

“You’re going to have to tell someone about this, Harry,” Draco points out.

They’ll be at the river’s edge soon, and the sun-warmed air is redolent of pine. Harry doesn’t want to spoil the beautiful day by dredging up the misery he felt during those years. Not that Harry has many fond memories, but his failure as an Auror is a particularly painful reminder of how little he knew himself after the war. “I trained to be an Auror for two years. By the time I was qualified, it was six years after the war, and the Death Eaters had been wiped out. The job felt petty. Mean. Most of the crimes we investigated day-to-day were minor, and the wizards and witches we arrested were poor or marginalised in some way. I hated it.” 

“Sounds like it was a let-down after fighting the baddest wizard of all,” Draco says, and for the first time since he’s been reacquainted with this more mature version of the man, he hears sarcasm in Draco’s voice. 

Harry looks at Draco and expects to find a familiar sneer on his face, but he’s smiling. Teasing, for sure, but not maliciously. Harry huffs his amusement. “Maybe. I’ve thought so myself at times. But I think it’s possible I changed after the war. I didn’t want to spend my days parsing good and bad. I was so sure Voldemort had to be defeated. After, I wasn’t sure of anything.”

“Makes sense,” Draco says, as though Harry’s post-war floundering was to be expected. What Harry can’t bring himself to say is that it was, and is, worse than that. It’s not merely that he chose the wrong profession. Most days he regrets the choice he made to live. He resents it. He returned with magic he doesn’t understand, and his mentors are all dead. He returned to do one thing, kill Voldemort, and having done that, all that remains is an aching awareness of what he gave up to do it. 

Harry doesn’t say any of that. He tells Draco a half-truth filled with dates and meaningless signposts of life’s march forward. He left the Ministry after six years, ten years after the war. He spent a few aimless years in London after, allowing various organisations and causes to trot him out for fundraising events. He met Wanda and let her manage his public life. He socialised minimally with Hermione and Ron and the Weasleys. He saw Teddy less and less after Teddy left for Hogwarts.

With Wanda’s help, Harry had fought off vultures looking to capitalise on his story for years, so he’d surprised everyone when he took Obscurus’s offer to write an autobiography and moved to Scotland. The book felt inevitable. It seemed a thing he couldn’t avoid, so he might as well control it. It was an excuse to disappear.

Draco lets him talk, only asking the occasional question. He isn’t taking notes, so Harry has to presume Draco is going to press him for more detail later. When they reach the riverbank, they set down their things and sit by the water, sticking their booted feet in and watching the weeds at the shore just under the surface.

“Do you have an outline? A narrative plan?” Draco asks.

When Harry was struck with this idea only hours earlier to ask Draco to write the book for him, he asked himself how honest he was willing to be. It’s already more difficult than he’d anticipated, talking about the years behind him. But he’s committed to this path, and so he makes up his mind, sitting by the River Dee, to tell Draco the hardest truth of all. “Sort of. I was thinking I’d start with my death and tell the story backward.” 

Draco turns to look at Harry, a half smile on his face. Harry doesn’t look away. “Are you planning on writing speculative fiction?” 

“No. I don’t mean my future death. I mean when I died. Before.” Ron and Hermione know, sort of. They don’t quite understand. He’s pretty sure they think he almost died. Most people believe he nearly died. Even those who know what Harry was to Voldemort don’t know what happened in the woods that night. And at times he wonders if it wouldn’t be more accurate to say he almost died. Except, what matters is how he experienced it, and he has no question about that. 

“When you died? What the fuck, Harry?”

“It was the only way to defeat Voldemort. Dumbledore knew it, all along, and I only realised it at the end.”

"How do you know…?”

“I know.” All of a sudden, it’s important that Draco believe him. Not because he wants Draco’s sympathy. He can’t imagine anything worse. What he wants is to be believed. 

“But you were alive. My mother lied for you. She told me so.” 

“It was a short death.” Draco’s expression is difficult to decipher, but he looks like he might be sick. Harry persists. “Dumbledore was there when I died. I…” He wishes he knew how to talk about this. “He told me I had a choice. I came back.”

Draco contemplates this for a minute in silence and then asks, “You want me to start your story with your death?”

“Draco, I’m so tired of trying to work out how to write about it. No. I don’t want people to know. I don’t want people to know how connected I was to Voldemort, that I had to die for him, or what’s happened to my magic. Especially since I don’t understand it myself. I don’t want people to know how fucking lifeless I’ve felt since that day!” Shit. “I have two versions of the book in my head. The truth, and what I’m willing to say publicly. And I haven’t managed to get either one of them on parchment.”

Harry hasn’t said so much to anyone. Oh, he’s said more words. He’s said more words to Ron and Hermione, who’ve always wanted to help. He’s said more words to Molly, more to Wanda. But he hasn’t admitted to being miserable, and he’s pretty sure he’s just done that with Draco.

Draco stands in the water then and wades out a few feet, bending over and letting his fingers play in the current. He splashes water in his face and watches the scenery. And then he returns to regard Harry. “Are you sure I’m the person you want to trust with this?”

“I have to trust someone. I don’t know why, Draco, but yesterday I slipped with you in a way I haven’t with anyone else. My magic slipped. I’m not going to be able to hide forever.”

Draco nods and reaches down to help Harry to his feet. Harry curses the way his body jumps at the touch, but he forces himself to restrain his magic’s reaching out.

“Let’s fish,” Draco says. “I need to think.” 

“Is that your answer to everything?”

“It’s my answer to many things,” Draco says.


	9. Chapter 9

Draco hears familiar footsteps on the stairs of his mother’s townhouse, but he still waits for the knock on the bedroom door. It gives him half a minute to put his quill down and collect himself before he tells Pansy to come in.

“It’s after noon, Draco,” she says, glancing around the guest room Draco has taken up as his. “Narcissa says you’ve been holed up in this room since last night.”

Pansy’s in Ministry robes, and Draco wonders if he’s lost track of the days already. He’s fairly certain it’s Sunday. “Work?” he asks.

“Ministry brunch. It was ‘optional’,” she says, making air quotes. “No one notices when you’re there, but they notice when you’re not.” She sits on Draco’s bed, which is neatly made. He’s hardly slept in it since he arrived.

“You look very official.”

“Well, you know,” she says, blowing air at her fringe and lying back on his duvet, arms stretched over her head. “I can’t believe this is how you’re going to spend your visit, Draco.”

He’s told his mother and Pansy, and Harry has told his closest friends as well as his agent, about their arrangement. As much as Draco doesn’t want to attach his name to Harry’s autobiography, and as resistant as he is to writing more than an introduction, he knew he couldn’t get it done if he didn’t have the time, and he wouldn’t have the time if the two people he’d intended to spend it with didn’t know why he no longer could. And since Pansy was sure to tell Hermione under almost any circumstances, Harry argued for telling her and Ron. Harry says he doesn’t keep anything from his agent, either, and swears she won’t tell the publisher, so Draco accepted that. Draco has spent most of the last three days in Scotland with Harry, listening to stories from the first eighteen years of his life. At night, he’s returned to his mother’s and tried to outline the chapter. He finally started to write this morning.

“I owe the man my life,” Draco says, “as well as my freedom.” Because he did go to the reunion carrying a sense of debt, even though his motivation for doing this for Harry feels more about the present than the past.

“Is that it?” Pansy asks, still lying on her back with her feet on the floor and staring at the ceiling. “Guilt? That’s all?”

He’s glad she isn’t looking at him, because he’s not sure how well he can hide what he’s feeling. He can hardly breathe at moments from the weight of what Harry’s shared with him. Guilt doesn’t begin to cover the recriminations he’s heaped upon himself while listening to Harry’s story, as though the words are a volley of arrows piercing his own flimsy façade of decency. He has tried. He truly has tried to change. In fact, he thinks he has. But he won’t live long enough to undo the privilege he was raised with and the wretched squander of it. 

He’s thought a lot about his own father over the past few days, listening to Harry. Lucius was never the same after his time in Azkaban. A second sentence, short though it was, did him in. His mother wrote to Draco two years after he left England and told him his father had died of a severe case of cerebrumous spattergroit, which he picked up in prison. Draco’s never fully come to terms with the fact that his father was not a good man, and never reconciled that with the fact that in some ways he was a good father. Harry’s childhood is an unavoidable reminder that Draco was loved and, although his mother blames his father for putting him in harm’s way, in most respects he was protected by his parents. Certainly by his mother.

Harry was given neither love nor much protection after his parents were killed. Not even by Dumbledore, whom Harry clearly had wanted that from. 

“Let’s say I feel indebted, and leave it at that.”

Pansy doesn’t get up, but she turns her head on the bed and looks at him across the room. “I think you’re doing It because you like him.”

Draco nods. He can let her think that much. He could hardly pretend otherwise. What he doesn’t want her to know is that as briefly as he’s known Harry—this adult Harry—he’s had moments of feeling alive and connected to him that he’s never felt with anyone else. Meanwhile, Harry asked him to be his ghostwriter precisely because of an absence of feeling on his part. Because Harry’s counting on Draco’s emotional distance to match his own. Draco doesn’t want Pansy to know any of that, and he certainly doesn’t want Harry to know how little distance he feels.

“You like him a lot,” Pansy says, and levers herself up, leaning back on her hands. “It’s okay. It’s comforting to know you’ve retained something of your adolescent preoccupations.”

Draco shrugs. “I’m not sure liking Harry has much to do with my prior obsession, which was as much hate as anything else.”

“Love, hate. They’re closely connected.”

“Who said anything about love?” Draco is unable to entirely scrub his voice of alarm.

“Strong like. Whatever you prefer. I think you strongly like him,” Pansy says.

Draco shrugs again. The best way to deal with Pansy is to not give her words she can use against him.

“Okay, have it your way,” she says. “I came to invite you to dinner at Hermione’s tonight. Your mother is coming and you’re expected as well. Hermione’s working on getting Harry there.”

Draco was gearing up his excuse, but… “How is she going to get Harry to leave Scotland?”

“She’s going to impress upon him the importance of giving his biographer a chance to see him interact with his closest friends.” 

“I’m writing an introduction! That’s all,” Draco says, because he thinks if he keeps saying so, it might turn out to be true. 

“Nevertheless, it’s important to know more about your subject than merely what he tells you about himself.” 

“You just want me to go to dinner with you.” Not that he doesn’t want to spend time with Pansy. He’s briefly met her husband and daughter, but he hasn’t spent a full hour with his friend since they returned from Hogsmeade a week ago. 

“I want that, yes. I want you to spend some time with Narcissa, too. I want you to get out of this stuffy room. All of those things,” Pansy says. “Plus, I expect Ron will end up cooking, which means we’re likely to get a decent meal out of it.”

Draco is astonished when he discovers his mother has agreed to walk to dinner. It turns out the Granger-Weasleys live less than a mile away, but it’s still an adjustment to see Narcissa Malfoy in slacks and sensible walking shoes.

“I’ve learned to fit in,” she tells him. Her long hair is pulled back and he thinks she looks well. He hadn’t thought so the night he arrived, but now what he sees is a woman in recovery. She’s endured a great deal, and it’s aged her. But she’s come out on the other side of her worst losses and is thriving in her own, quiet way. 

She may be dressed casually, but his mother has retained some sense of propriety, so she takes his arm and lets him escort her down the block to meet Pansy, Grim, and Cate. Once their party is gathered on the pavement, Cate charges ahead and Narcissa resettles herself on Grim’s arm. Draco and Pansy follow behind, and Draco enjoys listening to the conversation between his mother and Grim, whom he’s beginning to think is not grim at all, but rather sweet. He’s a large man, a Ministry bureaucrat who, by Pansy’s account and Draco’s brief observation, appears to be a wonderful father and doting husband.

“Ministry politics,” Pansy says, in aid of Draco’s eavesdropping. He thought that’s what they were discussing, but wasn’t certain. “So dull.”

“You work there, too,” Draco says. “And I imagine you take your work quite seriously or there’s no chance you’d have got on so well with Hermione all these years.”

“What do you know about it?” 

“I did take classes with the woman for six years,” Draco says. “Whatever else I might have thought of her, she was the most dedicated student at Hogwarts, and I would bet she’s the same at work.”

Pansy pulls a face but then the sneer slides into a more genuine smile. “Bloody annoying,” she says. “Yes, well, I do take my work seriously if you must know. I still think it makes for dull conversation.” 

Draco’s been looking for an opening to ask the questions he’s had since Harry started telling him about his past. He wouldn’t have learned any of it if not for the book, and the book also gives him an excuse to satisfy his curiosity with Pansy. “You were at the Ministry already when Harry became an Auror, weren’t you?”

“We weren’t friendly, if that’s what you’re asking. But yes, he was finishing his training when I got promoted up from the admin pool to a policy post at the Department of Labour.” 

“What did you think of him?” It isn’t precisely what Draco wants to know, but he doesn’t know quite how to ask about Harry’s general well-being. Was it obvious that he was miserable? Was he alone? Did anyone realise what he was going through? 

“I suppose I was a bit curious, like everyone else, but not as much as some,” Pansy says. “I was still reckoning with the fact that my parents turned out to be horrible people and that most of what I’d been taught about the world was utter bollocks. I wasn’t quite ready to accept Harry Potter as my saviour.”

Draco’s pretty certain Harry loathes being thought of as anyone’s saviour, though that’s a recent revelation.

“Hermione and I were on maternity leave the same year, shortly after we started working together. It was still a couple of years later before we were close enough for her to confide in me, and by then it was near the end of Harry’s time at the Ministry. But she fretted about him constantly. And there were rumours about him.”

Draco has an inkling what those rumours might have been, but he still asks her what she means.

“The man killed Voldemort. He was bound to be feared. People said he was dangerous, had more power than anyone so young ought to. Hermione used to say that Harry’s boss was a small-minded fool, and maybe he was. But a lot of people weren’t surprised that Harry got put on a petty crime beat, loaded down with paperwork. Fair or not, he made people nervous. They were afraid.” 

“Were you afraid?” Draco asks, because he’s spent a rather intense week around Harry, and although there’s no question he’s suffering, and no question he hasn’t got full control over magical abilities that are remarkable, it seems like the only person he’s hurt since the war is himself.

“I don’t think so. I didn’t interact with him much. He’d come to our offices to talk to Hermione. Mostly he looked miserable, desperate not to talk about himself. I’m not even sure he knew what they said about him. As far as I know from Hermione, he never even questioned his assignments. Just grew increasingly unhappy until he left.”

Everything Pansy says lines up with Harry’s own version. The one piece Draco hasn’t been able to put together is how someone with such devoted friends has managed to isolate himself the way he has. If anyone could help Harry get control of his magic, it’s Hermione. Why hasn’t he asked for her help?

He has a theory about that, too, but he hopes he’s wrong. 

____________________

When they arrive at the Granger-Weasley’s neat townhouse, Cate disappears with the girl, Rose, who favours her mother except for the mane of flaming red hair that leaves no question about her parentage. As Pansy had predicted, Ron is in the kitchen. The enticing aroma of a Sunday roast is coming from that direction. The man himself appears in a colourful apron to greet his guests as Hermione ushers them into the sitting room, and then retreats back to his meal preparation.

Draco is about to join his mother on the sofa when Hermione announces that Harry is upstairs in her youngest’s bedroom. “I think he’d like it if you go up and say hi,” she tells him. Pansy, his mother, and Grim all watch him expectantly, and he knows his relief that Harry is in the house is probably conspicuous on his face. 

“Um, okay,” he says, awkwardly escaping from their scrutiny and mounting the narrow staircase.

He’s about to call out to locate Harry when he hears a miniature roar down the hall. A door is ajar, and Draco could swear there’s a small monster loose. He hurries towards the sound, not knowing what to expect, but is reassured by a child’s giggle as he pushes into the room. He finds Harry sprawled on the floor with a young boy, and several tiny dragons flying overhead.

“Duck!” Harry warns him, just as one of the dragons, vibrant red and blue scales shimmering in the lantern-lit room, hisses a teeny spout of fire at his head.

“What the hell?” Draco ducks and the fire misses the top of his head by an inch. It’s a small flame that likely couldn’t do more than singe, but it’s menacing nonetheless.

The boy is rolling on the floor with laughter, and Harry’s beaming up at Draco with such a genuine smile that it weakens his knees. “Sorry, I think it’s my fault,” Harry says, and he waves his hand at the flying creatures. All three of them speed off towards a shelf to join a handful of similarly beautiful miniature dragons, the rest of which are inert.

Harry gestures for Draco to join them on the floor, which he does, feeling that familiar tug as soon as he gets close to Harry. Finally, the boy recovers himself from his fit of giggles and says, “Hello, I’m Hugo.” 

“I’m Draco.” 

“I know, Harry told me you were coming.” Hugo looks at his shelf and sees that the dragons have retreated to what is likely their proper resting place. “Mum spelled them stuck to the shelf, but Uncle Harry un-spelled them!” Hugo proclaims. 

Harry hastily corrects him. “Please don’t tell your mother that. I don’t know how they came unstuck. I swear I didn’t do it on purpose.”

Harry’s likely telling the truth. And he’s also likely to have a trustworthy confederate in the little boy, who looks about six years old. He’s the spitting image of his father, poor thing.

“I won’t tell. Mum never blames you for anything, anyway. I’d be the one to get in trouble,” Hugo says, as though it’s perfectly normal for him to take the blame for the actions of a man in his thirties. Pansy wasn’t understating things when she said Hermione thinks of Harry as a brother.

Harry displays appropriate gratitude for Hugo’s discretion and then asks Hugo to tell him about school. The boy is apparently old enough to have started primary school, but instead of telling Harry about his classes or classmates, he launches into a detailed account of his plans for summer holiday, which will begin in a week.

Draco watches Harry listen intently to Hugo, and wonders if Harry has realised Teddy will be home from Hogwarts soon as well. Narcissa has told Draco all about her plan to travel to the coast with Andromeda and Teddy in August. Has Harry considered he ought to make a visit? This is another facet of Harry’s isolation that Draco can’t understand. Draco has isolated himself from people he loves for nearly fifteen years, so he doesn’t question that there are myriad possible reasons for it. And he has no question Harry has his own reasons. He simply hasn’t worked out what they are yet.

When they’re called down to dinner, Harry asks Hugo to let his mother know that he and Draco will be down in a bit, and then he waits for the boy to leave. “Hi,” he says when they’re alone.

“Hi,” Draco says, his throat suddenly dry. It hasn’t been twenty-four hours since he left Harry’s cabin, but he’s spent so much time with him since Wednesday that he’s missed him today. “I’m surprised you came.” Harry sits with his back against Hugo’s bed, his legs perpendicular to Draco’s. His chiselled features are softened by the lantern light, and Draco finds himself unable to resist staring.

“It was under duress. But I’ve missed Rose and Hugo.”

“I’m sure Hermione would have you any night of the week,” Draco says, prodding Harry to divulge something he hasn’t yet been willing to divulge.

But Harry doesn’t answer him directly. Instead he shrugs and changes the subject. “How’s the writing going?”

“I wish I’d gotten to the river this morning. It might have cleared my head.”

Harry nudges Draco’s knee with his socked foot, and Draco curses himself for the desire that spikes at that merest touch. He’s overwhelmed by the impulse to reach out and grab Harry, and wonders if Harry has any inkling what his proximity does to Draco. “I thought about going without you, but then I wasn’t sure I’d remember how to release the fish if I caught one, so I went on a long run instead.”

They’ve been fishing together every day since Wednesday until today, and Harry’s learned most of the basics. His cast is still a bit wobbly and he panicked the one time Draco had him unhook a fish in the water, but he could probably manage on his own.

“We should get downstairs,” Draco says, reluctant to leave the amber light of the child’s bedroom and the comfort and, if he’s honest, exhilaration of sitting on the floor next to Harry. He has such mixed feelings about writing Harry’s story for him, but it’s given him something precious—insight, understanding, and a map to his own past, even if it leads to painful discoveries at times.

“Yeah,” says Harry, who is absently drawing swirls into the heavy carpet under them. “It’s nice here, though.”

Harry rarely looks relaxed, so to see him look it now makes Draco even more reluctant to force him down to dinner. Draco decides to try again. What does he have to lose? Harry clearly doesn’t think of him as anything more than a means to an end. “It is nice here. Why don’t you come more often, Harry?”

“Do you need to know the answer to that?” Harry asks. “To be able to write this book?”

“I’m writing an introduction, and it would help, I think. Otherwise I have pieces that don’t fit, or maybe they do. The picture I see is full of assumptions.”

“What’s the picture you see, Draco?” 

Draco has resisted drawing conclusions, and he could write something, possibly even something honest, without forcing Harry to tell him what’s wrong, but he feels a bit like he’s writing in the dark. “By all accounts, you were a great friend and had a fighting spirit. Before the war. I saw it myself. And then something happened, and you’ve withdrawn from the people who matter the most to you. You died, for one thing. Something nearly no one knows. Your magic changed, which people might suspect, but don’t understand. I might have thought you were protecting people by your absence, but other than spelling fish out of the river and a few toy dragons off a shelf, I see no signs that you’re madly out of control. So it leaves me wondering if maybe you simply don’t want to be here.” Draco watches in dismay as Harry sinks into himself as he talks, but he can’t seem to stop the words. “Because those people downstairs love you. They’d help you. I don’t believe you’re worried that they’d judge you. You know they wouldn’t. It’s almost as though you resent having survived, and so you’ve chosen to pretend that you didn’t.”

Harry closes his eyes then, shutting off any connection between them, and pulls his knees up to his chest. Draco is worried he’s going to cry. Finally, Harry nods. “I didn’t have a choice. I hate that,” he says, his voice a whisper.

“What do you mean, you didn’t have a choice?” Draco recalls what Harry said when he described his own death. “To live? You said you chose to come back.”

“Not because I wanted to,” Harry says, his eyes still closed. “I wanted to stay. I wanted to stay with Dumbledore, my parents, Sirius. But if I’d stayed, Voldemort would have lived. I came back for him. I hate him for that most of all.” 

“And you resent your friends for needing you? You came back because they needed you?” Draco asks, distraught at Harry’s confession, even if it only confirms what’s he’s been growing to suspect. He has no right to ask Harry to tell him these things.

“Yes,” Harry says.

“Yes, which?”

“Yes, I came back because they needed me. Yes, I resent them,” Harry mumbles into his knees. “I’d make the same choice again, a hundred times, but it wouldn’t change the way I feel.”

“But you did come back. You’re here now. Why cut yourself off from the people who would make life worth living?”

Harry raises his head then and looks Draco in the eye, his own eyes bloodshot with unshed tears. “Because I don’t know how long I’ll be here. And they deserve better.”

“You don’t know—?”

“I feel like I’m in a waiting room. I don’t know how long I can wait,” Harry says, every word laden with the guilt of confession.

Draco feels the colour drain from his face. He’s lightheaded from the weight of Harry’s sorrow, and the weight of responsibility he feels to it. “You wouldn’t—” he starts, not sure he can finish the sentence.

“I haven’t, have I?” Harry says, his expression pleading for understanding. “I haven’t. But I’m not sure what good it does anyone to be only half here. Ron and Hermione deserve better. Teddy. Gods, Teddy. He deserves so much better.”

Draco has to bite off the temptation to argue. Harry’s unhappiness runs fifteen years deep, at least, and Draco isn’t going to talk him out of it. It’s impossible not to wither at the comparison between Harry’s emptiness and the extent to which a week with Harry has made Draco feel more present than he has in memory. The disparity only further proves how deluded he’d be to imagine a connection between them. And this isn’t about him, anyway. 

“What can I do, Harry?”

Harry shakes his head as if to say nothing, and then sits up straighter. He visibly pulls himself together, and Draco wonders how much practice he’s had at it. “Don’t tell anyone what I’ve just told you.”

“Of course,” Draco says, because he would never betray that trust.

He hears heavy footsteps on the stairs in the silence that follows, and Harry rubs at his eyes in preparation for the summoning. Ron sticks his head around the door a moment later.

“Hey you two, what’s going on? We gave up waiting and started to eat.”

Ron inspects Harry, and Draco remembers how protective he is of his friend. It probably looks like Draco’s made him cry. Well, it is his fault for forcing the conversation.

“Sorry, Ron,” Harry says. “Dredging up the past for this book has done my head in.”

Ron’s expression softens and Draco’s grateful Harry’s not as honest as he’s reputed to be. It isn’t a lie exactly, anyway.

“Understood, mate,” Ron says. He nods at Draco then, and Draco would swear there’s still a hint of suspicion in his regard. “How about you take a break?”

Draco takes that as his cue, and pulls himself off the floor. “I’m famished. I’ll go down now. You two can talk if you like.” And with that, he leaves the old friends to it. 

Harry and Ron arrive at the dinner table not long after Draco is seated. The meal itself is delicious, and Draco doesn’t mind telling Ron so. Harry is quiet, making occasional conversation with Hugo, Rose, and Cate, but generally avoiding the political discussion Grim and his mother have continued from their walk. Hermione keeps adding food to Harry’s plate, but all that seems to accomplish is to increase the food left there. The company is pleasant, but Draco can’t shake the heavy sadness that’s settled over him. He has no reason to believe he can help Harry, but he’s come to feel that he’d do almost anything if Harry asked him. And it’s that thought that sticks with him through the evening. 

Pansy, Grim, and Cate leave first, needing to get Cate to bed for school the next day. Draco and his mother leave shortly after. He says good night to Harry on the doorstep, promising to visit him in Scotland before the end of the week. He expects he’ll be able to share some progress on the chapter by then. 

He and his mother skip the walk and Apparate home. Draco is hoping he can escape to his room without an inquisition, but Narcissa stops him as he’s heading upstairs. “I hope you know, Draco, that it isn’t your job to save Harry.” 

Draco drops his hand from the banister and turns to her. “I know, Mother. I hardly think I could even if I wanted to.”

She nods and goes to him, kisses him on the cheek. “Write the book if you want to. Just so long as you understand that Harry is his own biggest problem.” 

“What makes you say that?” Draco asks, because although her tone doesn’t speak it, the words have an edge of unkindness to them.

“I mean that the help is there for him if he wants it. He hasn’t wanted it.” 

And that’s the bottom line. Draco has been around for a week, and prior to that was a distant memory, if not an enemy. Harry’s had years to get help from better people, more worthy people, and he hasn’t sought it. He’s refused it, in fact. What more can Draco possibly do? 

The one thing he can do is to give Harry his book. He’s not sure how, but he has an idea. A crazy idea. 

“Thank you,” he says to his mother. “I appreciate your concern. I think maybe I do want to write this book after all, and maybe someday I’ll write another.”

She smiles at that and says goodnight. Halfway up the stairs, Narcissa calls up to him. “Severa is on the roof, if you need her." 

“Conveniently,” he says. That bird definitely belongs to his mother.

Back in his room, Draco pulls out a clean sheet of parchment and starts a letter to Akseli.

____________________

By the following Saturday morning, Draco has made a good deal of progress. Harry gave him several weeks and he’s been writing for only one, but inspiration hit him Sunday night after he wrote to Akseli, and he hopes Harry likes what he’s done. It’s not what Harry had in mind. For one thing, Draco isn’t going to write Harry’s death. He doesn’t think Harry owes that to anyone.

He could polish what he’s written further, but he misses fishing. Even more, he misses Harry. Apart from a single firecall midweek that Draco made to clarify some of his notes with Harry, they haven’t communicated since dinner at Ron and Hermione’s. He knows it makes no sense, because Harry has carried on for nearly thirty-three years without Draco’s interference, even despite it, but Draco’s still got a niggling worry that Harry shouldn’t be left alone. The small glimpse he got at the depth of Harry’s despair, his admissions, have left Draco with a feeling of urgency about Harry’s welfare. He’s not sure the book’s first chapter, or even the offer he hopes to make, will help. He expects what Harry needs is something else entirely, maybe something Draco can’t give him. But since he has this one thing to give, he’s poured all his energy into it. 

Draco Apparates to Harry’s cabin with his knapsack on his back, eager to see Harry and show him the chapter. When he arrives, he notes the tackle box and rods on the porch look as though they’ve been used in his absence. He hops up the steps and knocks, but doesn’t get an answer. It would be unusual for Harry to be asleep. Draco’s made himself at home before, so he lets himself in and peers around the sitting room before calling further into the house. 

The cabin is dim with the curtains drawn, and there’s no sign of its inhabitant. It’s nearly ten in the morning, and Harry hasn’t gone fishing, so he must have gone for a run. It’s cloudy but dry, which is almost as much of a treat in this part of Scotland as it would be in Helsinki, so Draco decides to wait outside. 

Draco’s baseline concern increases exponentially when nearly an hour passes and Harry still hasn’t appeared. He’s about to go look for him when Harry’s haggard figure crests the hill. He’s jogging at a decent clip, but he’s obviously favouring one side. He startles when he sees Draco, and Draco watches as Harry tries to straighten out his gait and hide the limp. As he gets nearer, it’s clear from his splotchy complexion that he’s over-exerted himself. 

“Draco,” Harry pants. “Didn’t expect you.” 

“How long have you been running, Harry?” Draco asks, because Harry does not look well. The worry he’s been carrying all week spikes. 

Harry can’t answer because he’s working too hard to catch his breath. Instead of walking to keep his muscles loose, Harry sits down heavily on his steps, and Draco could swear he’s close to a swoon. “What the fuck, Harry?” 

Harry pulls in a handful of sharp breaths, too shallow for the effort they require, and leans his forehead on the banister. “Sorry, I just—” He takes another gasping breath. “—lost track.”

Draco makes a quick judgement call that now is not the moment for a lecture. Instead, he runs into the house for a glass of water and brings it to Harry, who’s still struggling to breathe properly.

“Thanks,” he says, and Draco is relieved he can say that much, and also that he’s able to get the water down without vomiting.

A few minutes later, it looks like Harry can finally pull in a full breath, though he’s still panting. “You should probably try to walk a bit, so your muscles don’t seize,” Draco says. 

Harry nods and drags himself up. He’s shaky on his legs and his limp is pronounced. The circle he walks in the drive is slow, and Draco is queasy thinking about the fact that Harry has pushed himself this far for no apparent reason. All he can think is that everything Harry told him on Sunday is evident in his unwillingness or inability to take care of himself in the simplest ways.

When Harry returns to the steps, he doesn’t acknowledge Draco, but leaves the door open behind him as he goes to lie down on the sofa. Draco follows and pulls out his wand before Harry can object. “Do you know if it’s muscle, tendon, or cartilage?”

“It’s the calf muscle,” Harry says, burying his face in the crook of his elbow.

Draco sits on the edge of the sofa. Most of the healing magic he knows he learned at sea with Akseli. But he spent a few months at a wizarding infirmary on Barbados almost a decade ago, and he learned some acceleration spells for mending muscle tissue there. “Hold still,” he tells Harry. The spell is warming and he lays a hand over Harry’s calf to make sure he doesn’t burn it. There’s the ever-present hum of energy emanating from Harry that catches like a barb in Draco’s chest each time he feels it, confusing all of Draco’s best intentions. He wishes he could keep straight his reasons for holding Harry at arm’s length, because Harry’s constant reaching out, even his magic’s reaching out, erodes Draco’s resolve a little more each time he has to resist.

“That’s good,” Harry says, and lowers his arm to meet Draco’s eyes. “It’ll be fine. Thank you.” 

Draco ends the spell and moves to stand, but Harry wraps his hand around Draco’s wrist. “I’m sorry, Draco. I know I keep saying this, but it wasn’t intentional. I’m a little at loose ends this week. I didn’t mean to hurt myself.”

“What will you do if this book gets finished? What will you do next?”

Harry has the nerve to bark a laugh at that and shake his head. “I don’t have a fucking clue. I wish I could tell you what I’m going to do tomorrow.” 

Draco wraps his hand around Harry’s at his wrist and squeezes, wanting to give comfort, wanting Harry to feel a tiny fraction of the connectedness he feels when he’s with Harry. “I brought you a rough draft. You should probably get some rest, but it’s here for you when you’re ready to read it.”

“Are you leaving?” Harry asks, and he sounds dismayed. Draco reminds himself that Harry faces each new hour with trepidation, and it’s only the fact that he’ll have to decide what to do next that bothers him.

“I probably should. Let you recover.”

“Why don’t you go to the river?” Harry says. “You’ve been away all week.”

Even more than wanting to fish, Draco would like to check on Harry after he’s had a nap and make sure he’s okay. A few meditative hours on the Dee would probably help his frame of mind, too. So he agrees.

Harry is asleep by the time Draco has fetched the book chapter from his knapsack and laid it on the end table. Harry’s muscled limbs are tense even in sleep, his T-shirt and shorts spelled dry but stained from sweat. He’s as gorgeous as he was the night of the reunion, and Draco hates what it does to him just watching Harry sleep. If Akseli responds the way Draco hopes, his resolve will be tested much more seriously than it is standing a few feet from Harry in his sitting room.

Draco shakes that thought off and lets himself out, gathering rod and tackle and walking the now familiar path to the riverside.


	10. Chapter 10

Harry surfaces from sleep with a fleeting thought that after years of insomnia, he’s had trouble staying awake since the night of the reunion. Since Draco re-entered his life. He wishes, again, he knew what that was about, but the sleep itself is a gift. He vaguely remembers that Draco agreed to go fishing before he passed out, and hopes he hasn’t missed the chance to see him before he leaves.

He stretches and stands carefully, testing his tight muscles after the stupidly long run he took this morning. He’s sore but the injury is healed. He must have run for at least two hours, and on an empty stomach. It was an idiotic thing to do, but he’d felt so good in the middle of it. This past week has been a confusing mixture of emotional highs and lows, both more extreme than he’s felt in years. He had no business telling Draco the things he did at dinner on Sunday. It was unfair to burden him with that. And at the same time, he’s burdened Draco with the unwritten book that’s plagued Harry for so long. He’s felt relief, though, on both counts. The thought that the book might get written and he can put it behind him is like finding escape from a trap he’d put himself in. There’s similar relief in telling someone his most guarded secrets. But now he’s also aimless, and with that aimlessness has come a crashing depression that he fights off one minute only to succumb to the next.

He told himself Draco was the perfect ghostwriter. Close enough that Harry could talk to him, but not so close that he’d take on Harry’s emotional baggage as his own. Nothing about Draco’s reactions to Harry’s stories suggests he can maintain the distance Harry was counting on. Maybe it’s too much to ask of any feeling person, regardless of how much he cares or doesn’t about Harry specifically. Draco is a feeling person, too. Not remotely the callous cad Harry was counting on him to be the night of the reunion.

Harry decides he needs to eat something, when he sees the bundle of parchment Draco has left for him on the end table. He peers at the pages and reads the neatly scripted title: _Introducing Harry Potter_. There’s something so satisfying about even the notion of a title. A title for the chapter? A title for the book? It’s already more than Harry has accomplished successfully in all these months of labour.

Harry takes the parchment with him to the kitchen and sits down to read once he’s made himself a cup of tea and toast. And as soon as he begins, he finds himself drawn in by Draco’s words, so far from what he expected—personal and sad, and also, he thinks, true.

_So much of Harry Potter’s life is known to you already, and yet for every story that’s been told there is the one that hasn’t been. You know that Harry was raised by Muggles, but you don’t know how much they took from him and how little he’s asked in return from the wizarding world that gave him up to them as an infant. You may know that Harry lost his parents, his godfather, his mentor, and a protector to Voldemort and the Death Eaters, but you don’t know that he would have died a hundred times over to save just one of his loved ones. You know that Harry survived at least three attacks on his life by Voldemort, but what you don’t know is that it was a combination of love, luck, and the help of friends as much as skill or cunning that ensured his survival. Every witch and wizard in England, and many beyond, know that Harry Potter defeated Voldemort, perhaps the most powerful dark wizard to ever live, and at great personal sacrifice and peril to himself. But what you don’t know is that the greatest sacrifice he made was the chance to be no one of consequence. _

Harry reads on, humbled and moved by the picture Draco has drawn of him. It’s an introduction, just as Draco promised, and it sets up the pieces of Harry’s life story beautifully. It also sets limits, and Harry recognises them immediately. Harry will not die in this story, only nearly die. Harry is deeply connected to Voldemort through the attacks he survived, but he will not reveal that he was a walking horcrux. Sirius will be vindicated finally, completely. Dumbledore will be revered, and the extent to which he hurt Harry, used Harry, will remain Harry’s resentment to carry, not the rest of the world’s. Snape will be honoured respectfully, but his agony over Lily’s rejection will not be fodder for gossip. Nothing Draco says is untrue, not even in spirit. He’s simply limited the disclosures so that Harry can hold onto the pieces that are closest and most personal, and no one else’s business.

The relief of it brings him to tears, and he’s in that state when he hears the call of an owl and the thud of a landing outside.

Harry is startled enough to be shaken out of the emotions Draco has inspired. It takes him a moment, but he wipes his eyes and pulls himself together. When he gets outside, he finds an unfamiliar owl on his banister, with a letter addressed to Draco tied to its foot. The bird is beautiful, its feathers shimmering black in the afternoon light, and absolutely uninterested in relinquishing its correspondence to Harry. It chooses to ignore Harry’s invitation to nest and peers at the drive as though it knows Draco is out there somewhere. It probably does. “Have it your way,” Harry says, and goes in to take a shower and consider how to convince Draco to write the rest of his book.

It’s hours later when Draco returns. He appears in Harry’s doorway with the cooler in one hand, the owl on his arm, and having shed his waders and boots. His hair has come loose from the knot at his neck and he’s a vision. Harry has tried so hard to respect Draco’s no-sex rule, but it hasn’t stopped the physical reaction he has to being in a room with the man, let alone the way his entire body lights up like a Christmas tree when they touch.

“Whose owl?” Harry asks, because it seems a safer topic than the plea he’s going to make for his book, or the plea he has to swallow for Draco to close the distance he’s imposed between them. And he’s definitely curious to know who’s writing to Draco.

“I thought she was mine. But she’s my mother’s, if she’s anyone’s,” Draco says. “Meet Severa.”

Harry laughs. “Merlin, she looks just like Snape!”

Draco smiles and sets down his cooler before bringing the bird over to Harry so he can pet her. Harry will never not miss Hedwig, but the pain of the loss has softened over the years.

“She’s her own master. I found her in Finland, but she comes and goes. Mostly she comes when I owe my mother a letter.” 

“I see. But this isn’t a letter from Narcissa.” Draco’s been at his mother’s all week, and will likely return there shortly.

“No,” Draco says, freeing the letter from the bird’s foot and setting her down on the back of a chair. “I think this is from Akseli. If you’ll give me a few minutes to read it, I might have some news.”

“Okay,” Harry says, even more curious now. “I’ll make us some tea. Did you bring me a fish?”

“I did.”

Harry takes the cooler to the kitchen and spends some time preparing the salmon to be cooked later for dinner. When he’s satisfied that he can feed Draco and has given him plenty of time to read, he returns to the sitting room with two mugs of tea and Draco’s chapter floating beside him. He’s ceased the pretence of using a wand entirely around Draco, and it’s freeing. The serious expression on Draco’s face as he reads, or perhaps rereads, the letter gives Harry pause, but he sets Draco’s tea down on the coffee table and sits across from him, waiting as patiently as he can to hear the news. 

Finally, Draco folds the letter into his lap and looks at Harry. “Did you read the introduction?” 

“I did,” Harry says. “It’s… perfect. I love it.” Harry finds himself getting choked up again. Even if Draco refuses to write another word, he’s already given Harry a beautiful gift with what he’s written. “I can’t thank you enough.”

“I’m so glad,” Draco says, and he looks embarrassed by the praise. Relieved, maybe. “I wasn’t sure what you’d think.”

“I think you’re a talented writer.” Harry isn’t sure how to approach the subject, but he has to give it a shot. “I noticed you wrote me in the third person.”

“I tried first person, but it didn’t feel right to appropriate your voice,” Draco says. “You could still publish it as an autobiography with an introduction by… well, by me, maybe.” 

That’s more of a concession than Draco’s been willing to make so far. To put his name on the introduction. It gives Harry the courage to push further. “Or we could publish Harry Potter’s biography by Draco Malfoy.”

Draco stands then and paces to Harry’s window, pulling the curtain back and peering out. Instead of speaking to Harry, he speaks to the green beyond the glass. “I have a proposition for you.”

“Okay,” Harry says to his back.

“Come with me to Finland. Akseli is willing to have you on board. He’ll let me work on the book in my free time, and limit my shifts to six a week.”

Harry is stunned by the invitation. It’s more than he could have asked for. Draco’s offering to write his book. He’s offering to take Harry with him.

“How long would we be at sea?” Harry asks, not because he cares, but because he knows he’s supposed to wonder about things like time and place.

“It’s a long job. We’ll be out for more than two months, until early October. I don’t think it’s long enough to finish your book, especially not while I’m working, but we could put a significant dent in it.” 

Draco turns to Harry then, and if Harry didn’t know any better he’d say Draco is nervous.

“And can I work, too? Can I help on the boat?” Harry would hate to be idle while surrounded by working witches and wizards.

“You’ll be expected to work. I’m not sure how much interest you have in learning the ins and outs of trawling. It’s nothing like fly-fishing. But if you’re interested, you can learn the basics. You can help with cleaning and maintenance of the boat. And I think you know how to cook, even though you never do it. The cook can always use an assistant.”

Harry would agree to almost anything to take Draco up on this offer, but even the prospect of hard work is appealing. More than two months of absolute anonymity, work that might take his mind off his own miserable existence, and the perfect solution to the predicament he’s in with Obscurus. He couldn’t ask for more. 

He can almost convince himself he’ll survive two sexless months with Draco aboard a boat and not perish from unspent desire. There are worse ways to go, anyway. He should know. 

“Yes,” he says. “Yes, please. When do we leave?” 

“We sail in two weeks. I need a couple of days in Helsinki, so I’d like to get back by the twenty-fifth.” Draco looks as though he wants to say more. He comes away from the window and sits back on the sofa, takes a sip of his tea, and then sets it down again. Harry decides to give Draco room for whatever is on his mind. Finally, he says, “I have one condition.”

Harry nods and waves at him to continue. 

“If you come on this trip, I need you to work on getting control of your magic. I’m not terribly concerned about the safety of the crew. I don’t think you’re a menace. But there’s no reason for you to know so little about the powers you have.”

It’s unfair, but Harry hears the words as an attack. His instinct is to object. More than that, to cry out in anger. Draco may not have killed Dumbledore himself, but he surely participated. The one person Harry trusted to guide him is gone, and Harry left him at King’s Cross Station to come back to this life, carrying magic with him that he didn’t ask for.

He doesn’t shout at Draco. He does feel himself coming undone by his sense of injustice. His eyes sting and his hands curl into fists. The emotion wells into a ball of magic energy that is truly dangerous, and it’s the fear of what he’s capable of that finally drives him to bring it under control. Draco doesn’t say a word, but watches him while he fights with himself over his response. He’s ashamed of the way his voice cracks when he finally answers. “I lost everyone, Draco. Who can I trust?”

Draco comes to him, kneels in front of him and clasps his hands around Harry’s, beseeching him with his own depth of emotion Harry can’t begin to interpret. “I know I’m the last person in the world you should trust in this, Harry. I’d do anything to undo the past. But you are not alone.” 

“Where would I even start?” Harry asks. It’s foolish, he knows. Hermione probably could have helped him years ago. His unwillingness to reach out is illogical, and also something he’s clung to stubbornly.

“There are magic users all over the world who don’t rely on wands. There are methods for harnessing magic that rely on other totems, on other natural elements around us. I probably have ten books on my shelf back in Helsinki that could provide you with some answers. There’s a couple who work on Akseli’s boat who use wandless magic. They hail from the Sámi people up North and use magic in ways similar to those I’ve seen in other parts of the world. There’s help all around you. You just have to be willing to ask.” 

Harry blinks away tears and tries to hear what Draco is telling him. It sounds so simple, and doesn’t feel simple at all.

Draco wipes his tears away with sure fingers and lingers with his palm on Harry’s cheek. They begin to sway closer, and before Harry can stop himself, before his mind catches up with the impulse, his lips are on Draco’s and every nerve ending in his body sings at the heady slide of Draco’s warm mouth over his own.

Draco groans and deepens the kiss, slow, searching, and so terrifyingly erotic, the feelings threaten to swallow Harry whole. Their lips part and tongues meet, and Harry’s body strains to fall into Draco’s arms.

And that’s when Draco pulls away, his eyes wild and lips red. “I’m sorry, Harry. Shit.”

Harry is trembling with desire. He isn’t sure why Draco is apologising. He’s pretty sure this is on him, but then he wasn’t alone in it either.

“It was me,” Harry says.

“No, it was both of us.” Draco pulls away completely then and stands, dragging his fingers through his hair and watching Harry like he’s a feral creature. “You wanted something simple when you asked for sex from me. You want someone who doesn’t care about you to write your book. But nothing I feel about you is simple, Harry. And I’m not a disinterested party here. Not remotely.”

Subconsciously, and maybe even consciously at times, Harry has known this. And what a sad, pathetic person he is to have nothing to offer in return. Draco spent fifteen years forging a miraculous human being out of the murk of his childhood and adolescence, while Harry has spent those years mouldering like the coat in his closet. Draco deserves someone who can make him happy, who knows the value of his own life. He has feelings for Draco, too. He’d be lying to say otherwise. But he’s ghosting through his own life and there isn’t enough of him present to build a relationship on. If that’s even what Draco wants. 

“I’m so sorry, Draco. I wish I could be more.”

Draco looks like he’s choking back a tide of emotion, and Severa chooses that moment to squawk from her perch. Harry watches in dismay as he rubs his hands vigorously over his face, as though he’s trying to scrub away the feelings written on it, and then goes to the owl. 

Without looking at Harry, he tells him, “I need to go. I need to spend time with my mother. If you still want to join me, let me know and I’ll be back to get you on the twenty-fifth.”

“Draco, wait.” Harry doesn’t want him to leave like this. It’s his fault, and he doesn’t know how to fix it, but Draco has given him so much. He can’t let him walk out with nothing in return. “I was going to cook for you.”

Draco finally meets Harry’s eyes, Severa on his arm and his knapsack over his shoulder. “I can’t stay.”

“Okay,” Harry says, wanting to forestall goodbye but not sure how or what for. “I promise, I’ll work on my magic. If you think there are books I should read or people I should talk to, I’ll do that. I want to go with you.” 

Draco nods, looking around the cabin as though he might find an answer to some unspoken question there. “I’ll be here on the morning of the twenty-fifth. Pack warm, waterproof clothes. Nothing fancy. I’ll send an outline of the book for your publisher if I finish it before we leave."

Harry can only nod in response. He hates that he’s let himself become such a parasite, a vampiric shadow in the lives of the people who care about him. The last thing he wanted was to become that to Draco.

__________________________

Harry spends the next week reading about Finland’s herring industry and memorising the names and workings of the parts of a pelagic trawler and the machinery he can expect to find on board. Draco sends Severa to him with an outline of the book and a brief note asking Harry to send certain names and dates in return. Wanda is ecstatic over the draft introduction, and uses it to renegotiate Harry’s contract with Obscurus, naming Draco as the author. The new contract ensures that the money will go into escrow until he can convince Draco to take it. He can donate it to charity if he chooses. Harry isn’t going to let him walk away from the project with nothing.

At the end of the week, with only four days left before his departure, Harry receives an invitation from Narcissa to a farewell dinner for Draco on the twenty-fourth of July. The invitation lets him know that Andromeda and Teddy will be in attendance, and that he’s free to invite “close friends” if he chooses. Harry’s intentions flip frequently between “under no circumstances” and “it’s the least I can do” and “I should see Teddy,” over the course of the next couple of days. He packs away the fishing gear Draco has left him, thinking how much he’d like Draco to return to use it one day. He packs his own bag for the months he’ll spend at sea. He tidies his cabin, which no longer contains the detritus of his authorial struggle. And finally, he firecalls Ron and Hermione to invite them to Draco’s dinner, and arranges to meet them at six o’clock sharp at Narcissa’s on the eve of his departure.

Standing on Narcissa’s doorstep, flanked by Ron, Hermione, Rose, and Hugo, and carrying a bouquet of wildflowers he picked from his own field, it occurs to him how unexpected the turn of events that brought him here has been. The reunion he refused to go to, which turned into an outrageous proposition, which has turned into a friendship and partnership, and a trip to somewhere he’s never imagined going. When he testified at the trials on Draco’s and Narcissa’s behalf, and Draco walked away from all of them without turning back, he could never have predicted being here tonight under these circumstances.

Pansy’s daughter, Cate, answers the door and fails all rules of etiquette by seizing Rose and taking off with her down the hall, leaving the rest of their party standing with barely a foot in the door and no one to lead them. Hermione takes charge, closing the door behind them and shoving Harry down the hall until they follow voices to the sitting room, where they find a lively party. 

Harry spots Draco immediately, as though his internal compass is set to him whenever they’re in a room together. He’s dressed in slacks instead of jeans, and a light button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, exposing his gorgeous forearms. Harry catches his breath and forces his eyes away from Draco to present himself to Narcissa first. Conveniently, she’s standing next to her son by the fireplace, so Harry gives her his bouquet and thanks her for having him.

“Lovely,” Narcissa says of the flowers, and leaves them to find a vase.

Harry looks around the room and realises Teddy is there, on the sofa with Andromeda. He’s watching Harry expectantly, and Harry is torn between the awkwardness of his last meeting with Draco and the even greater awkwardness of confronting his abysmal failure as a godfather. When he meets Draco’s watchful expression, Draco nods in Teddy’s direction. “Go ahead. He’s been waiting to see you.”

Decision made, Harry excuses himself and goes to greet Teddy. When the boy stands, Harry discovers he’s nearly Harry’s height, a reminder that it’s been more than a year since he’s seen him. He pulls Teddy into a hug, glad that he’s come. “Gryffindor red,” Harry says, admiring his hair.

“It wasn’t intentional,” Teddy says. “No offense to the house colours, but I look better in blue.”

Teddy has his father’s eyes, and when they sit down to talk, Harry is aware that he avoids Teddy not only out of some selfless desire to protect the boy, but also because he reminds Harry so painfully of Lupin. Teddy’s clever and kind and devilishly curious. He wants to know all about the trawler Harry and Draco will be on until October. He wants to learn how to fly-fish. He wants to hear about Harry’s book. It’s all Harry can do to turn the topic of conversation back onto Teddy himself.

By the time dinner is served, he’s caught up a bit with both Teddy and Andromeda, and as guilty as he feels, it’s a relief to lessen his estrangement from them. Something else he has Draco to thank for. 

He’s seated between Teddy and Hermione, and across from Draco at dinner. It’s still unbelievable to him that Draco is taking him along to Finland, to sea. In some ways, it feels like they should be virtual strangers. And in other ways, he feels like he’s gotten to know him intimately. Not only or even primarily because of the sex, but mostly because of the things he’s told Draco. Also because of the way Draco has so patiently taught him to appreciate the River Dee where he’s made his home, and taken such care of the story Harry’s entrusted to him. Sitting across from him at dinner with family and loved ones feels like a glimpse at another life. One neither of them chose to live, but that they’ve stumbled into for this brief respite.

Hermione grills Draco over their meal about safety precautions aboard the trawler, and Teddy rolls his eyes every time Harry looks his way. But Draco takes the questions seriously and does his best to allay her concerns. “There’s a broom for everyone on board, stowed above deck where they can be reached in case we need to abandon ship. We’re rarely so far out to sea that we couldn’t Apparate back to some body of land, but whenever we do go that far out, the brooms are checked, the weather is watched closely, and we always know the general location of the closest wizarding vessel in case we need to make an escape.” 

“If you’re so far out you can’t Apparate, it seems a broom wouldn’t be much use either. If you lose your boat, could you really fly far enough to get to land?” Hermione says.

“We might not be able to get to land. It’s too difficult to Apparate to a moving boat without its precise location at any given moment, but we would almost always be able to fly to another wizarding vessel in the worst case scenario.”

“And how often does the worst case scenario happen?” Hermione is unrelenting, and while Harry hasn’t spent a moment worrying about his safety, he’s glad to learn that Draco doesn’t put himself in great peril without a reasonable plan for survival. 

“I know of only one Finnish wizarding vessel to sink with its entire crew in the last twenty years.”

“What happened?” Teddy asks. He’s clearly eager for a tale of death and destruction, but Draco just shrugs. 

“Lightning, waves. Likely a combination of both. Possibly a maelstrom.”

“There must be a story to go with a tragedy like that,” Hermione says.

“I’m sure there would be if anyone survived to tell it.”

That silences their little group and it’s Narcissa who speaks up from the head of the table. “Please don’t speak of such things at the dinner table, Draco. Teddy’s liable to have nightmares.”

In fact, Harry thinks Narcissa is the one liable to have nightmares. It must have been incredibly difficult to let Draco go all those years ago, and then to wait for only sporadic word while he roamed the planet.

After dinner Draco disappears with Pansy, and Harry has a drink with Ron on the sofa, Hugo squeezed between them. “Does Finland have dragons, Uncle Harry?”

Ron shakes his head vigorously behind the child and Harry can’t help but smile. “I don’t know, Hugo. I’ll let you know when I find out.”

“Are you sure about this?” Ron asks.

“Which part?” Harry’s as sure about this trip as he’s been about anything since the war, which isn’t saying much, but it’s the best he can do.

“Letting Draco write your biography. Spending more than two months on a tiny boat in the middle of the Baltic sea with the man. All of it.”

Harry’s pretty sure they’re sailing further than the Baltic, maybe far up into the Norwegian Sea, but he’s not going to get into details that will only worry Hermione, and maybe Ron as well. “I’m sure. About all of it,” he says instead. “I think Draco’s going to write the book I’d have written if I had a tiny fraction of his skill. The fishing expedition will be an adventure. When’s the last time I had one of those?”

“By your own choice, mate. Not for want of opportunity.”

Ron has never held Harry’s defection from the Ministry against him, but Harry knows he’s never understood. 

“True enough. I can’t explain, but I think the change of scenery will do me good. It can’t hurt,” Harry says, because he may not disclose everything to Ron, but his best friends know he’s unhappy. 

“What kind of scenery are you expecting? It’s going to be cold, wet, and stink of fish. You’ll probably get seasick. Sounds bloody awful.” 

It would definitely not be Ron’s idea of a good time. It might not have ever appealed to Harry before, either. “I may be sick for a bit. I’ll get over it.” He hopes, anyway. He’s been reading about seasickness, and he’s pretty sure he can conquer it with his magic, if by no other means. 

“You’ll write?” Ron says, and Harry knows he’s asking at least as much for Hermione as for himself. 

“I’ll try, yes. Send an owl and I’ll reply.”

____________________

Harry makes his excuses before the party breaks up. He’s all packed, but he’d like a little time alone to gather his thoughts before putting himself in Draco’s hands so thoroughly. Draco walks him to the door and steps outside with him before he goes. 

“Thanks for coming to dinner.”

“Thanks for inviting me,” Harry says, still surprised after nearly a month by Draco’s polite manners. 

Draco’s long hair is loose, and he pulls his fingers through it in what Harry is beginning to recognise as a display of nerves. He’s not looking at Harry, scanning the street for nothing in particular, Harry thinks. “I just wanted you to know, I’m really glad you’re going with me. I’m sorry if I made things complicated by… what I said. The other day.”

Harry’s had time to think about it, and although he keeps coming to the same miserable conclusion about his own incapacity, he has no interest in keeping Draco at arm’s length. He feels like there must be some way for them to be friends that doesn’t get either of them hurt. Draco knows more than anyone just how damaged Harry is. “Please don’t apologise. I took advantage of you. It wasn’t fair to dump everything I have on you and expect you not to care at all.”

“I do care. As a friend. It’s more than that, though. I’ve had my share of casual sex. What we had… wasn’t. Not for me.”

Harry wishes he could tell Draco the same thing. It would be honest. Nothing between them has felt casual to Harry, either. But he can’t bring himself to open that door, not when he still spends so many of his days feeling like he won’t make it to the next. Not when he’s determined to try to honour Draco’s boundaries. “I wish—”

“Don’t,” Draco interrupts him. “It’s okay. I understand you don’t feel the same way.”

“You know it’s more complicated than that,” Harry says, because although he won’t open a door that can only lead to heartache, he can at least acknowledge that much.

“Maybe,” Draco says. “Or maybe it isn’t that complicated.”

Harry doesn’t want to argue, especially not about this. “We’ll be okay, right? This trip? You’re sure about it?”

“We’ll be okay.”

There’s something Harry’s been wanting to ask Draco almost since the reunion, and he thinks now is probably the time to do it. “Is there anyone I should know about, Draco? In Finland? Anyone waiting for you?”

Draco shakes his head, and then nods, looking uncertain. “No. There’s someone I’ve been sleeping with on and off for more than a year now, if that’s what you’re asking. Akseli’s nephew. But that’s over.”

Harry feels a stab of jealousy that he has absolutely no right to feel. “How long has it been over?”

Draco shifts uncomfortably. “A month or so.”

“You’ve been here for a month, Draco." 

Draco only nods.

“Does he know it’s over?” 

“It was never more than sex. He’ll understand.”

“Will he be sailing with us?” Harry asks, because he needs to get used to the idea.

“He will. You’ll like him, I think. His name’s Eetu.”

Harry already hates Eetu, but he grunts in the affirmative and decides he’d better leave before he says something stupid. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow.”


	11. Chapter 11

Sleep is hopeless, so Draco spends much of his last night in London with his head out the window of the room he’s slept in for most of the last month, taking in the relatively warm night air. It’ll be raining tomorrow morning by the time he leaves, here and in Banchory. And likely in Helsinki as well. For now the air is humid, and he can almost imagine he’s on the coast, with a sea harbour just beyond view rather than the docks along the Thames. 

It’s been good to be in England. It feels more like home than he’d expected. He only made a couple of short visits to Diagon Alley and has spent most of his time between his mother’s, Pansy’s, and Harry’s cabin in Scotland, but London is familiar. It’s clear he was punishing himself to stay away so long, and now he can’t fathom why he never visited. Some not insignificant part of him doesn’t want to leave at all. But the trip ahead is not one he’d miss.

He has reservations about spending so much time with Harry in such close quarters, naturally. He’d be kidding himself to think it’s going to be easy. He’s tried to be honest with Harry, even if he hasn’t expressed the depth of feelings that have grown in the past month. At least he doesn’t have to pretend not to care.

He finally dozes at about four in the morning, and wakes to a tap at his door a few hours later. He’s alert immediately, trained to leap out of his bunk at a moment’s notice. Except this isn’t a bunk. It’s a deliciously comfortable bed he’s going to have to say goodbye to in a moment.

“I’m up!” he tells his mother, and then allows himself three more minutes to stretch out and imagine what it’d be like to stay. 

He showers, because he never takes access to running water for granted, and is downstairs early enough to share a last breakfast with his mother. He prepares eggs, toast, and coffee for them, and his mother avoids asking any of the obvious questions about his journey or its dangers, months with Harry Potter being the primary danger he’s concerned about.

Instead, she surprises him with a proposition. After letting Harry read his book chapters, he’d decided to let his mother see them as well. Not only was she enthusiastic, but she’s started doing some research of her own.

“I’ve been thinking we should try a traditional Samhain celebration at Halloween this year. Would you visit?” 

“What do you have in mind? You don’t exactly have the space for a bonfire.”

“I thought we might talk to Minerva about a celebration with the students at Hogwarts, following a unit on Celtic traditions in their History of Magic class. It’s not exactly a radical departure, but it would be a small opening to learn about one of the roots of a tradition they already know.”

It’s the last thing he expected to interest his mother, but it’s not a bad idea. They’d need more than a bonfire, though. They’d need instruction to come from a Celtic witch or wizard steeped in the tradition.

“Do you know someone who could guide the faculty through it?”

“I do, in fact,” she says. “Or, I think I could find someone. I have connections.”

“Can I help?” he asks, because it warms him to think of sharing this with his mother.

“Perhaps. I’ll write if I need anything. Say you’ll come back,” she says, and of course, that’s what she really wants from him. It would be enough.

“I will,” he promises, and finds he’s happy at the thought of making up for some of their lost time.

____________________ 

Finally, he steps out into the morning drizzle in front of his mother’s townhouse, looks up and down the empty street, and Apparates to Harry’s cabin with his knapsack and the Portkey Pansy procured from the Ministry. Standing in Harry’s drive, he takes a moment to absorb the beauty surrounding him. Even in the rain, the place is magical. He’d liked it the first time he visited, but he’s grown to love the sloping land, Maryfield Wood, and the peace of the River Dee. If London has felt welcoming for its familiarity, Harry’s adopted home calls to him. Maybe because it reminds him of the rivers he learned to fish on, or because he’s grown to love woods during his years in Finland. Or maybe it’s because Harry is here.

Harry loves this place, too. If only it were enough to coax him back from the purgatory he describes himself in. It makes sense to Draco, Harry’s sadness. He had no control over the prophesied fate that led to his death at age seventeen. Harry needs to choose to live the life he has, and Draco has no idea how to help him do that.

When he knocks, Harry is at the door, looking eager. It hadn’t occurred to him, when he proposed that Harry join him on this trip, that Harry would want to go for any reason other than possibly for the sake of the book. It’s been a surprise that he seems genuinely excited for the entire experience.

“You’re wet,” Harry says to Draco’s dripping figure on his doorstep.

“I thought I’d better get used to it. We’re exposed to the elements at Muggle ports and don’t spell against the weather at sea. Unless it’s extreme.” Draco has told Harry a lot about his work during their fly-fishing outings, but he’s not sure how much of it Harry remembers. “I hope you have at least one warm coat.”

“Hermione sent one a few days ago.”

Harry’s gorgeous green eyes are sharp with something Draco has only seen a few times during his weeks here: anticipation, curiosity, excitement.

“Shall we?”

Harry waves him in while he collects his own duffel bag, and they both survey the unusually neat cabin. “Will you miss it?” Draco asks.

“I don’t know. I guess I’ll find out.”

Draco is pretty sure he’ll miss Harry’s home, but their departure is unceremonious. Harry places a complex ward on the front door and then, moving down into the drive, raises his arm over his head and waves it at the house. Draco watches as the cabin disappears from view. 

“I don’t expect anyone to come looking for me,” Harry says.

“Better safe than sorry.”

Draco holds out the Portkey, the same oversized key that brought him from Helsinki almost exactly a month earlier, and Harry and Draco are hurled through incomprehensible space into the kitchen of Draco’s Helsinki flat.

It takes Draco a moment to get his bearings. When he does, he discovers Harry on his knees, clutching his stomach. He drops his bag and the Portkey and lays a soothing hand on Harry’s back, that ever-present hum tugging at Draco as soon as he makes contact. “Okay?”

“Yeah,” Harry grunts. “I’ve always hated that. It’s been a long time.”

“Give it a minute.”

Draco helps him to his feet and into a chair. “Do you get seasick?” Harry asks, catching his breath.

“Not anymore. I’ll teach you a spell. You’ll be fine.”

“Is that allowed?”

It took Draco months to get used to the customs of the Nordic wizards he sails with, which spells they consider acceptable and which they don’t. He’s glad he has a couple of days with Harry to orient him. Harry’s magic is unpredictable, but Draco’s trusting him to work on controlling it. He let Akseli know what to expect in his letter, and his friend wasn’t troubled. He was certain Helve and Emel could help Harry.

“It’s allowed. Let me get you some tea, and we can talk through some of what you can expect.”

Draco is conscious of Harry watching him as he pulls out his wand to rid the room of a month’s worth of dust and activate his charmed kettle. He opens the window by hand, letting damp air into the stuffy flat. It’s raining here as well, which is what it will be doing for much of the next few months before it starts to snow, but it’s seasonably warm and there’s a mild breeze that ruffles his curtains.

Once he’s poured them both their tea, he asks Harry to follow him into the small sitting room that connects the bedroom to the kitchen. Harry curls up on the loveseat and Draco begins pulling books down from his bookcase and piling them on the coffee table in front of Harry. By the time he’s identified eight books he thinks might help, Harry’s already got his nose buried in one of them called _Elemental Magic: Harnessing the Energy of Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water_. Despite the slightly New Age title, it’s actually a survey of a number of related practices of magic across more than ten cultures that do not distinguish between magic and non-magic users, but rather find magic grounded in natural elements outside of the user. It’s written in Arabic by a Syrian scholar. Draco knows a universal translation spell but Harry doesn’t appear to need it, or he’s already cast it with no noticeable effort.

There’s something about watching Harry read that suffuses Draco with affection. He’d always thought Harry was a bit of an imbecile in school. Harry himself has said he’s not much of a reader, and he’s certainly no writer. Draco’s come to appreciate Harry’s intelligence and the way it’s grounded in his heart, the way he moves through the world led by that heart. He may not be studious, but he listens to people and considers his actions… well, except perhaps where sex is involved. Draco pushes that thought away. Harry with a crease in his brow as he concentrates on a book—a book that could possibly begin to answer long-held questions for him—seems human in a way that it’s easy to forget he is, simply because he’s so remarkable.

Harry is lost in the book for nearly a half hour before he looks up and notices Draco watching him. “Sorry, that was rude.”

“Not at all. I got them out for you to read. We can take them with us.”

Harry sets the book down and peruses the additional titles Draco has stacked for him. On top is a book on sustainable fishing. It won’t help Harry control his magic, but it might help him to understand the reasons Akseli fishes where and how he does.

“Do you have things you need to do?” Harry asks.

“I could use a new wool jumper, and we’ll need to get food.” Draco likes the idea of showing Harry around the nearby market. He also wants to make sure Harry has proper clothing. It will be mild into early September, but they’re heading far north, and by October it could be frigid. “Do you mind showing me the clothes you’ve packed?”

Harry smirks but then shrugs. “Don’t trust me?”

“Hermione will kill me if you catch your death on this trip,” Draco says, hearing the words too late. But Harry just laughs.

“It’s okay. I know what you mean.”

Harry’s bottomless bag has room for infinitely more than he’s packed, which Draco finds is minimal as Harry stacks it all on the loveseat for his inspection. There are two thin jumpers and four pairs of jeans. He’s packed a couple pairs of wool socks and a few long-sleeved shirts, but the rest of what he’s packed won’t provide adequate warmth for the latter half of their trip. Harry needs long johns, more wool socks, a pair of lined pants, and a heavy jumper. At least the wool coat Hermione chose is appropriate. And the anorak Harry wore in Scotland will do for the late-summer rain. Harry’s wand is at the bottom of his bag, though Draco never sees him use it anymore. He hopes Harry will be less self-conscious about that once they’re at sea.

“We need to go shopping,” Draco says. “I can lend you socks and some warmer shirts, but the rest of what I have will be too big.”

Harry looks Draco up and down with an assessing eye at that, reminding Draco of the sexual tension between them he can hardly forget. “Is there a Diagon Alley equivalent in Helsinki?” Harry asks, innocence in his voice that is not in his expression.

_Ignore it_, Draco tells himself. “Not as such. There are neighbourhoods with higher concentrations of wizards and witches, but their shops aren’t segregated from the Muggle shops. Muggles sell the warmest clothes anyway."

If Draco could be objective about it, he’d have to acknowledge that Harry isn’t half the shopping partner Pansy is. He’s entirely uninterested in the clothes Draco picks out for him, making small talk with the shopkeepers instead of paying attention to their task, and only occasionally complaining that certain jumpers are “scratchy.” But Draco isn’t remotely objective, and he enjoys every minute of it. He loves picking out clothes he thinks suit Harry and that will keep him warm. It’s a kind of caretaking he enjoys, and he gets a secret thrill out of buying them matching wool jumpers—his in dark blue and Harry’s in a rich green to match his eyes. Harry, thankfully, doesn’t appear to notice. 

Draco notices early on that Harry seems to be communicating in Finnish with increasing comfort as they move from shop to shop. He’s enjoying the outing too much to question it, and when he does ask, Harry tells him, “Hermione sent me a Finnish phrase book with the coat.” But after a couple of hours, it becomes clear that Harry knows more Finnish than he could possibly have learned from a phrase book in a few days.

When they’ve made their last purchase and stand on the wet pavement, laden with bags, Draco finally says, “You’re speaking Finnish, Harry. Not phrase-book Finnish. Actual Finnish. You’re speaking better now than you were two hours ago.”

Harry shrinks into the hood of his anorak and doesn’t meet Draco’s eyes. “I have a facility for languages.”

He’s famous for speaking Parseltongue, but there’s no reason to believe that has anything to do with it. “You’re using a translation spell, like the one I use when I read. Only for the spoken word. That’s incredibly difficult.”

Harry shrugs in that way he does. “It’s not a conscious spell, not one I could teach you. I have to hear the language a bit, but once I do, the translation picks up speed.”

“Amazing,” Draco says, because it is, like so much about Harry. Harry’s discomfort at being noticed is something Draco is getting used to.

They return to the flat long enough to put down their bags, and then Draco takes Harry to the nearby Hietalahti Market. Harry takes more interest in the stalls selling crafts than he did the clothing stores, and by the time they reach Beatriz’s little four-table restaurant, they’ve worked up an appetite. They’re ahead of the dinner rush, so Beatriz sits with them and Draco introduces Harry to the witch whose food he looks forward to each time he finishes a job. He’s picked up a tiny bit of Portuguese after years eating here, and so, mostly to satisfy his own curiosity, he starts a conversation in Beatriz’s native tongue and marvels as Harry catches on, quickly conversing in the language so comfortably that Draco can’t keep up.

“Your friend has language magic, I think,” Beatriz says in English, and Draco agrees, never having heard the term.

“Is that a thing?” 

“Of course,” she says.

Draco makes note of it as something to follow up later. It’s not a topic he knows anything about, but he’s endlessly curious.

Harry has a lamb and vegetable dish on Draco’s advice. The food stores aboard Akseli’s boat are some of the best managed at sea, but there’s still some limit to the variety and an awful lot of fish. Harry beams at Draco over his meal, a smile that on the rare occasions Draco sees it never fails to wrap around his heart.

“Good?”

“Delicious,” Harry says. “What a great little spot.”

Draco loves it here, in the market and at one of Beatriz’s tables. He brought Eetu here in April and it had been a pleasant evening. Sharing this place and this food with Harry is special in ways he couldn’t put into words. They talk about the months ahead, Draco running down the most basic framework of how the trawler operates, the different jobs on board, and when it’s acceptable to use magic, most of which he’s described in broad outline to Harry before. Harry listens intently and asks questions, his biggest concern being how he’s going to make himself useful. It took years for Draco to learn the cleansing release from his own mind that hard work offers. Harry knew nothing else from childhood, and it’s obvious that after months of idleness he forced on himself in an effort to buckle down and write, he’s eager to be busy. Something about Harry’s unreserved interest in the labour that Draco has made his life gives Draco confidence they can work side by side without complication.

That confidence slips when they’re back at his flat, sharing the loveseat so Draco can write while Harry reads. It’s too easy to imagine Harry is as present as he is, as invested in the thing growing between them. Draco left the windows open through the day, and the temperature has dropped to cool the flat. It’s not cold, but pleasantly chilly. Harry’s socked feet find their way under Draco’s thigh, and he reclines further into the cushions. He’s unaware of what he’s doing, maybe? Unaware of the electric connection he ignites every time he makes contact with Draco. Draco remembers Harry telling him his magic gets jumpy when they’re near each other, and wonders if Harry notices the current between them now.

It’s early, but they have only one more day before they depart, and Draco’s exhausted from the night of too little sleep. He needs to rest before he gets back to work. He also should probably clear his head after a long day spent so close to Harry.

He stands and stretches, telling Harry he’s ready to turn in. “You can take the bed, and I’ll sleep out here.”

Harry looks at the loveseat he’s curled up on. “Where? Does this get bigger?”

Not in the small room, it doesn’t. “I’ll put some cushions on the floor. It’s fine." 

“Not a chance,” Harry says. “I can sleep out here, and if you won’t let me, we’ll share your bed.”

All of this had occurred to Draco when he invited Harry, and he’d sworn to himself he wouldn’t cave in to the temptation to sleep next to Harry. Faced with the moment of decision, he has to concede he doesn’t remotely have the willpower to say no. He’s so weak, in fact, that he’s halfway to erasing all of the boundaries he’s drawn between them. He takes a deep breath to ground himself and looks Harry in the eye. “Are you going to behave?”

Harry takes advantage of the fact that Draco is watching him and stretches languidly on the little sofa, letting the book drop while his shirt rides up and exposes one hip and the dip of his stomach. “Do you want me to?”

Shit. Shit. Does he? The part of him that’s concerned with his own sanity does, but that particular bastion of self-preservation is currently overshadowed by the much larger part of Draco that wants Harry so badly, it doesn’t care about getting hurt. “You turn me inside out, Harry,” he says, hearing his voice strain with the conflict he feels.

Harry stands and puts himself in front of Draco, running the soft pad of his thumb along Draco’s jaw. “I’ll behave, if that’s what you want. The last thing I want to do is make any of this difficult for you,” Harry says. “I know it’s selfish, but it’s only a matter of time before you get tired of me. There isn’t enough of me to tie yourself to, but the part of me that’s here right now is yours.”

Draco shivers at the words. Harry doesn’t seem to understand that the only person who fails to feel the full weight of his presence is Harry himself. Draco’s given up the pretence that he’s a disinterested biographer. With that particular objection gone, it’s only his own heart at stake, nothing else. And with Harry right in front of him, in Draco’s own sitting room, his heart seems an insubstantial thing to risk. “Let’s go to bed,” Draco says, and he takes Harry’s hand to lead him into the bedroom. 

The small room is lit only by the lamp in the street below, and Draco thinks maybe he’s safer in the dark. He and Harry both undress in silence, dropping their clothes on the only chair in the room. He pulls the duvet that’s been gathering dust for a month off the bed, and crawls up the mattress, turning onto his back, planting his feet and spreading his legs. Harry doesn’t move for a moment, standing at the foot of the bed, a heart-stopping silhouette of lean muscle and erect cock.

“Do you want me inside you, Draco?” Harry says, understanding precisely what Draco is asking for.

Draco nods, his throat too dry to speak. He waves his hand in the direction of his bedside table, hoping Harry can find his way to the oil there.

“Not yet,” Harry says, and he follows Draco onto the bed, crawling up after him. 

He’s nothing like the Harry who wanted it rough in his own kitchen. Instead, he seduces Draco into a pliant, quivering mess, lavishing attention on every inch of Draco with his hands and his mouth. He starts at Draco’s feet, massaging each one and moving up his calves, kissing behind his knee, running short fingernails up Draco’s thigh and setting everything on fire with his touch. He fondles Draco’s heavy balls and ignores nothing except for his erection, leaving Draco panting for friction. Harry pays attention to the trail from Draco’s navel to his groin, nips and licks along his hipbones, and ends up at Draco’s nipples, using mouth and fingers to pinch and rub and suck until Draco is arching off the bed with prickly sensation. He bites down the urge to beg, letting Harry have his way and relishing, too, the tenderness in Harry’s ministrations. It’s almost too much, and would be more than enough if he thought Harry felt half of what he conveys with his touch. 

Finally Harry leans over Draco and kisses him, a sweet, lingering open-mouthed kiss, his tongue a caress in Draco’s mouth and along his lips. They share breath and the scrape of stubble, the velvet slide of wet lips, and for long minutes Draco loses himself completely in the simple pleasure of their connection.

Heated arousal breaks through the gauzy sweetness of the kiss then, and Draco is arching again without thought, his cock seeking contact with Harry and a whine escaping from the back of his throat. 

“Shhh,” Harry says against his lips. “So beautiful, Draco.”

Draco is vaguely aware that Harry has held out a hand for something, and then without any effort or manoeuvring, his fingers are slick with oil and he’s pressing into Draco’s arsehole, the blunt pressure a welcome counterpoint to the jittery electric current he feels at every place where he and Harry meet. Harry’s touch is sure, his finger curling over Draco’s prostate, massaging there until Draco cries out from the unbearable pleasure of it. Draco’s hips cant and his cock is wet on his stomach, and then Harry pushes a second finger inside him, stretching him and opening him until he’s sweating and trembling to get fucked.

“Harry, please,” he says, relishing every second of Harry’s torture even as his body begs for release. His eyes have adjusted to the dim penumbra of light from outside, and Harry’s earnest expression, focused on Draco so intently, ties something tight in his chest. “I need you,” he says, wishing he could need Harry less.

Harry slides his fingers out and kisses Draco once more before pushing inside him with one long, achingly slow slide of his cock. Draco groans out an exhale at the fullness, his insides pulsing at the physical and magical connection between them. It’s almost like Harry is pulling Draco inside him even while he thrusts deep inside Draco. He could swear his own magic is reaching back to Harry’s as it grasps at him. “Perfect,” Harry moans, his focus still heavy on Draco, his eyes never leaving Draco’s. “You feel so bloody good.”

Draco clutches at Harry’s arse, holding him there tightly before urging him to move. And then Harry does move, pulling out and thrusting with increasing speed until the blood in Draco’s veins burns through him and pleasure swells in his aching balls. “Fuck, Harry. Oh gods.”

Harry shifts so he’s hitting Draco’s prostate with each thrust, and Draco feels the moment he loses the last thread of control, his muscles giving over to Harry, his whole body captive to the pleasure riding through it, captive to Harry’s driving cock. And that’s when he feels the handless grip on his erection, magic tightening around it and stroking him until the pleasure explodes and he quakes through a seemingly endless orgasm. He hears his own broken cries like they’re coming from someone else, feels the thrust against his prostate that has him in pleasure’s grasp, and he can’t find his way out of the sensation, like he could drown in it. “Harry, Harry, oh fuck…”

Harry finally stutters and grinds deep into Draco, a rush of heat and energy inside filling him again with something more than natural pleasure. Draco’s name is on Harry’s lips as he spills into him and then collapses on top of him, his arms wrapping tight around Draco.

They’re both left panting into each other’s ears, sweat and come between them, and it takes time for Draco to regain his sight and feel like he’s back on earth. When he opens his eyes, Harry is nearly unconscious on top of him, and Draco has to nudge him to move. Harry groans and takes his time pulling back and sliding out of Draco. He doesn’t speak, but watches himself pull out of Draco as though he’s watching some kind of miracle. The expression on his face confuses Draco so much that Draco has to look away.

Harry disappears off the bed and pads into the bathroom, then returns with a wet flannel to clean Draco. It’s so pedestrian after whatever magic he unleashed while they fucked that Draco gasps out a giggle as Harry wipes his stomach.

“What?” Harry says, trying and failing to look offended.

“You,” Draco says. “What the fuck kind of sex magic was that? And why are you washing me by hand?”

Harry can’t entirely suppress his smile in response. “The magic was accidental. As I keep telling you, I can’t entirely control it. This is me taking care, something I can control.”

“Uh-huh,” Draco says, understanding, but still a combination of charmed and alarmed.

“Shut up.” Harry forces his face to render some semblance of seriousness. “I can’t help it if my weirdo magic wants to grab you whenever you’re near.”

Draco sobers a bit then. He’s still not remotely scared of Harry, but there is something that neither of them has a grip on flowing between them. He wishes he understood it. “I feel it.” 

Harry grows truly serious then, not at all amused. “I would never hurt you. I hope you know that.”

Draco can’t answer with words, only blinks up at Harry in an attempt to convey understanding. It’s ironic that the power Harry has to hurt him has nothing whatsoever to do with his magic. He can already feel the ache in his chest at the thought of Harry dismissing what’s between them as some kind of sexual magnetism.

“You okay?” Harry asks.

Draco sighs as Harry’s touch lifts off him. “I’m good. That was amazing.” 

“It was. I feel like I could sleep for a week.”

Draco stretches and drags himself off the bed. “You should try to get a good night’s sleep tonight. It might be the last for a while.” He wants a shower, another thing they’ll both miss. It’s tempting to invite Harry in, but now that he’s free of the insane arousal that drove him to break his own rules, he feels the growing need to reassert some boundary. “I’m going to take a quick shower.” 

Draco is aware of Harry watching him as he flips the light switch and closes the door behind him. He has to lean on the sink with both hands to regain his composure. He studies his reflection, long hair wild around his face, lips red and swollen, a bruise sucked into his collarbone. He looks as well and truly fucked as he feels, both literally and figuratively.

He keeps the shower brief and steps out with a towel around his waist to find Harry on his back in the bed, naked still, staring up at the ceiling. “Do you want a shower? There’s one miserable shower on Akseli’s boat and you won’t have regular access to it.”

“Too tired,” Harry says, watching Draco dry off and climb onto the bed beside him. “I’ll shower tomorrow morning.”

It’s tempting to force some kind of conversation with Harry, but it won’t lead anywhere Draco will like. He Accios his wand from his jeans pocket and Scourgifies the bedding, including the duvet. Then he tucks Harry in and curls up behind him, the only way they can both comfortably fit on the narrow mattress, and something he’s wanted to do for weeks now. Harry doesn’t protest. Instead he squirms tighter into Draco’s embrace and is asleep in minutes, with Draco closely behind him. 

____________________

Draco wakes to a buzzer and discovers he’s still curled around Harry, hard against Harry’s arse and warm in all the places where their skin meets.

“Is that a Muggle doorbell?” Harry mumbles into the pillow.

“Muggle building, Muggle doorbell,” Draco says, reluctantly pulling himself off of Harry and running to the loo while the buzzer rings again. “Coming!” he yells, knowing full well he won’t be heard downstairs.

He grabs his robe on the way out and hears Harry mutter, “Sexy,” as he heads into the sitting room to buzz the unexpected guest in. He has a feeling he knows who it is, and he should have been better prepared for this. He doesn’t expect a confrontation, but he wishes he had handled this better. 

A minute later, Eetu knocks. He opens the door to him, grateful Eetu is never physical with him apart from sex. Appearing in his robe at the door might look like an invitation, and he’s anxious not to let this get awkward between them. “Hello, Draco,” Eetu says, and he looks like he’s going to say something else, but then his attention is drawn over Draco’s shoulder. 

Draco follows the direction of his gaze and discovers Harry emerging from the bedroom in nothing but a thin pair of boxers. The scene looks exactly like what it is, though in so many ways it isn’t at all how it looks. “Eetu, this is Harry. Harry, Eetu.” Draco waves at both of them and watches with some interest as Harry straightens his posture and sticks an almost aggressive hand out at Eetu.

Eetu for his part does not seem troubled. He’s his usual affable self. “Good to meet you. Uncle said Draco was bringing a friend along. I think you are someone famous.” 

He expects Harry to shrink at that, but maybe it’s because it so clearly means nothing to Eetu that Harry simply shrugs. “In England, I guess.”

“We heard about your Voldemort here, too. Bad business. Good you took care of him.”

And it’s that simple. Eetu sits on the loveseat, engulfing most of it, while Draco makes them all tea and Harry goes to dress. A few minutes later, he invites them both to sit at his kitchen table while he dresses himself, and comes back to find them chatting away in Finnish. It’s somewhat embarrassing that Eetu switches to English when Draco returns, but he appreciates it nonetheless. 

“You are writing Harry’s biography?” Eetu asks, and then turns to Harry. “Draco is always scribbling in his free time. He never shows me what he writes.”

“He won’t be able to stop you reading this, since it’ll be published,” Harry says. “Though I can’t imagine it’ll interest you.”

“I will like to read it,” Eetu says, and Draco has no doubt Eetu will be fascinated by Harry’s life story for many reasons, not least of which being the extent to which Harry has been protected by his mother’s love, even in her absence.

Harry changes the subject to their fishing expedition. There’s so much he has to learn, and Draco would be overwhelmed at the prospect of teaching it if it weren’t for the fact that Harry’s curiosity seems genuine and that Akseli, and likely Eetu and others, will help. “We fish the Baltic first,” Eetu tells him, “then make our way around Denmark. We’ll put into port there before heading into the North Atlantic, up to the Norwegian Sea. Out of the most overfished zones.”

“How often will we put into harbours?” Harry asks.

“Two, maybe three times. We can stay out much longer than non-magic vessels because we can hold so much more food and water and store more fish. We will sell some of our catch in Denmark and then Norway on the way back,” Eetu explains. Draco has told Harry some of this in the context of describing his work, but he isn’t sure himself what Akseli’s itinerary is this time out.

Before he’s exhausted his questioning, Harry excuses himself to take a run. It will be a long time before he has another chance, and Draco encouraged it yesterday. He thinks Harry is also giving him a chance to talk to Eetu alone. 

When Harry has left, Eetu finally asks him, “Your mother is well?”

Draco can’t help but smile. “She is. I wasn’t sure at first. She’s older. But she’s well, yes.”

“And she was happy to see you,” Eetu says, confident that he’s right.

“Yes, very much so,” Draco says, and it’s true. His mother hadn’t fussed, but Draco knows how much it meant to her to have him home.

“You will visit now. More often.” It isn’t a question. So many of Eetu’s questions aren’t really questions.

“I think so, yes. I promised to return at the end of October.”

“You’re a good son, Draco. A good man.” He says this as though the two are synonymous. It occurs to Draco that he never asks after Eetu’s mother. He knows that she lives up North, and that Eetu’s father died when he was very young, but that’s about all he knows.

“What about your mother, Eetu?”

“She is well. She lives in a house with three other witches. They are all very powerful and do not let men in the house. They say men contaminate their magic.”

“Where do you stay when you visit?” Draco asks, intrigued.

“I am her son. I’m allowed in the house. Only parts of it, of course.”

Of course, Draco thinks, wondering why he’s just learning this. It’s not as though their friendship was strictly sex. They didn’t talk much, but they did talk some.

“You never told me that.”

“Because I thought it would make you sad. You are happier now. There is this Harry, and you have your mother back.”

Draco experiences the words as they wash over him, an observation that is painfully true, and also missing key information. He is happier. And there is Harry, but Harry is also a constant disturbance to his peace.

“You are sleeping with him?” 

“Not intentionally,” Draco says, because he’s still unclear how he let last night happen.

Eetu raises an eyebrow at that.

“What I mean is, I swore I wouldn’t, but I broke that promise to myself.”

“You care for him,” Eetu says, and Draco has to assume that much is obvious. He wishes he could have explained this to Eetu before things got this far.

“Harry doesn’t want me to. He doesn’t want me like that.”

“He is here with you now,” Eetu says. “There is something between you.”

And in the end, that’s what matters when it comes to what was between Eetu and him. 

“I’m sorry, Eetu. I should have written. I wasn’t sure what to say.”

Eetu nods, his expression solemn but not distressed. Draco isn’t sure whether Eetu has ever had real feelings for him, but he suspects whatever his feelings have been, Eetu is not someone who does anything thoughtlessly, including sex. “It is a loss, but maybe we can be better friends now.” 

“I’d like that very much,” Draco says. He hasn’t been a great friend to anyone for so long. He’s been wondering for a while now just who it is who he’s become, and he’s starting to realise after a month at home with family, with both old and new friends, that he isn’t only the solitary and lonely man he’d become after years away. He’s a better adult than he was a child, but he didn’t have to abandon every part of himself to be better, and he’s ready to retrieve the parts of himself that have roots.


	12. Chapter 12

After a run through the streets of Helsinki and a hot shower, Harry is loose-limbed and ready to talk to Draco about what happened last night, and about Eetu. He has no interest in talking about either subject, but decides he really must if they’re all going to live side by side for months.

Draco is writing at the kitchen table, his neat script filling the page. Harry sits down with a glass of water and contemplates avoiding the whole thing by asking about the book, but Draco continues writing and Harry uses the time to give himself a pep talk that this is the right thing to do. Finally, Draco sets down his quill.

“I can hear you thinking, Harry. Did you have a good run?”

“Can we talk?” Harry deserves the surprised expression the question provokes in response. “I know, not my strong suit. But we probably should.”

“Sure,” Draco says. “What do you want to talk about?” 

Harry doesn’t know where to start, so he starts in the obvious place. “Did I fuck things up for you and Eetu?”

Draco cringes at that. “There is no Eetu and me. We’re friends. I knew I didn’t have those kinds of feelings for him, and he and I should have talked about that long ago.”

“But you were sleeping together and now…?” Harry doesn’t want to presume, even though Draco has told him it’s over. He has no right to expect Draco not to sleep with other people. Up until last night, Harry had accepted their physical relationship was over. He loathes the idea of Draco having sex with anyone else, but he’s also aware of how unfair that is.

“Now we’re going to be friends,” Draco says.

“He’s a very good looking… mountain of a man,” Harry says, because there’s no question the man is handsome, and large.

“He is,” Draco laughs. “Look, Harry, do you really care why I am or am not interested in Eetu?”

On some level, he does. Mostly, though, he feels like an arsehole for not respecting Draco’s boundaries. The sex last night was incredible. So incredible that it scares Harry, because he has no business getting attached to Draco, and even less business allowing Draco to get attached to him. He’s spent years keeping his distance from people, even distancing himself from his closest friends. The fact that he’s drawn to Draco as strongly as he is should only be more reason for him to keep away.

“What I really care about is how I treat you. Sometimes I lose my mind around you,” Harry says.

“Do you regret last night?”

It’s impossible to read the emotion on Draco’s face, but Harry isn’t going to lie to him. “No. How could I?” He may regret the fallout, but the sex itself was not something he could ever be sorry for.

“But you understand why I didn’t think it was a good idea for us to keep sleeping together.”

“I think I do, yes.” Harry has been slow to recognise just how badly they both could get hurt. It took the intensity of what they shared last night to help him understand how much is at stake.

He reaches out to take Draco’s hand on the table, but Draco pulls back. “Don’t,” he says. “Every time you touch me, I feel you under my skin.”

Harry feels it too. He’s felt it since they first touched at the reunion. It’s not the reason he cares about Draco the way he does, though. It’s only the hook that makes careful choices around the man so difficult.

He pulls his hand back and sadness threatens to swamp him. How has it come to this?

“I’m so sorry, Draco.”

Draco shakes his head and Harry can only imagine what he’d say if he trusted Harry enough to share what he’s feeling.

“What can I do?” Harry asks, because Draco has brought him into his home and is bringing him aboard a boat with the people who have meant the most to him for years. He has to do something to make amends for the ways he’s fucked up. Draco has freed him by agreeing to write his biography, and there aren’t royalties in the world to equal the generosity of it.

Draco clears his throat. “Nothing has changed, Harry. I know your limits. You’ve been clear about them. I knew what I was doing last night.”

“What about the next two months?" 

“I think we need a little bit of space,” Draco says. “There won’t be much on board, but maybe you could bunk with Eetu.”

“Won’t we need to work on the book?” Harry feels childish, but he hasn’t imagined sharing his space with anyone but Draco.

“Yes, and we’ll be working together many days as well. I think sleeping with a little distance between us is not a bad idea. It won’t be much. You’ll see.”

“Okay,” Harry says. He doesn’t love the idea, but he doesn’t have any right to complain.

“We’ll manage the rest as we go,” Draco says. “We’ll both be busy, for one thing. Between working the trawler and writing this book, I expect every minute to be filled.”

That appeals to Harry. It’s one of the things he’s looked forward to the most about the trip.

There isn’t anything left to say, so Harry excuses himself to pack his new clothes and the books Draco picked out for him, and do some reading. In the early evening, he and Draco return to the nearby market and have another fabulous meal at Beatriz’s restaurant. Their mood today is sombre compared with yesterday’s. Last night, sitting over dinner with Draco, Harry imagined he might understand what it feels like to fall in love. He’s loved but he’s never been in love before, and really since Ginny, he hasn’t had a real relationship. If there were enough of him left to experience love, he thinks what he felt with Draco yesterday, what’s been growing between them for weeks now, is a glimpse at what it would be like. Tonight, he’s only too aware of how much damage he could do by letting either of them fantasise about such possibilities. 

When they get home, it’s still early, but Draco reminds him they’ll be up by four and suggests they turn in. Harry insists, after pointless resistance from Draco, that Draco sleep in his own bed, so they cast Nox over the flat and Harry does his best to curl up on the too short loveseat. He would swear he was up all night, except he’s startled when Draco shakes him awake in the dark.

It’s three-thirty in the morning and the sun won’t be up for more than an hour. Draco turns on a single lamp and brews coffee for them while they clean their teeth and dress, packing their last few belongings. They take the coffee with them in mugs Draco says he likes to keep on board, and carry their bags through the chill, damp cobblestone streets of Helsinki all the way to the Market Square. The long square fronts a harbour with endless boats, ferries, and larger ships docked in basins and on a handful of piers. The horizon has turned from black to deep blue, and there’s activity on many of the boats already. Strings of lights dot the harbour’s edge and twinkle from boats preparing to sell food at the edge of the square from the closest basin and along the piers. Draco leads him to the western harbour in front of what he says will be a busy market in an hour or two. “They call this Cholera basin,” Draco tells him.

“That’s ominous.”

“Historical, actually. That’s it,” he says, pointing to a large boat docked right in front of the market building, surrounded by smaller fishing vessels on either side.

Harry admires the trawler as they approach. Though not nearly as big as the huge commercial trawlers run by the large fishing corporations he’s read about, the blue and white vessel is still much bigger than the average private boat in the harbour. Lunastus is painted in bold black on the boat’s hull. _Redemption_. That can’t be a coincidence.

Harry would guess the Lunastus is easily more than thirty yards long, with a bridge two or three stories high, a pillar at the bow, and what almost looks like a satellite dish sitting above the bridge. There are a handful of men loading boxes onto stepped gangplanks, and the one shouting instructions stops abruptly when he sees Draco and Harry approaching.

“Draco!” the man shouts in welcome. If Eetu is a mountain of a man, his uncle is a mountain range. His wild mane of hair and beard are greying and he’s certainly old enough to be Draco’s father, but beyond that his age is indeterminate. Like so many wizards, he looks like he could be in his fifties or he could be one hundred. He greets Draco with a slapping hug and Harry is amused by how small Draco looks engulfed in his embrace. 

“Akseli, so good to see you,” Draco says. “This is Harry.”

Akseli holds out a burly hand and Harry does his best to keep a firm grip as they shake. He’s not as big as Hagrid, but his size reminds Harry fondly of his old friend. “Welcome, Harry Potter.” 

“Thank you. I appreciate you letting me come along.”

“Draco speaks highly of you,” Akseli says. “He does not speak highly of many." 

Harry could almost blush at that, and he’s grateful the sun isn’t up yet.

“Draco is doing an enormous kindness by agreeing to write my book—” 

“Your biography!” Akseli says in his booming voice. “Imagine, having a book written about you.”

Normally Harry would do everything he could to shrink into the dock at this point, but Draco warned him that Akseli would be enthusiastic and that the attention would blow over quickly once they set sail. So he smiles and nods. “It’s an honour. And I’m looking forward to learning the ropes aboard your boat,” he says, hoping to shift the conversation.

“Draco is a good teacher, as well as writer. We have many on board who can help.” 

Harry is counting on it. 

Akseli’s attention shifts back to the men and women hauling cargo on board and Draco tells him they’ll help as soon as they’ve stored their bags. “Is Eetu here?” Draco asks. 

“Below deck,” Akseli says.

Draco motions for Harry to follow him up one of the planks, saying hello to the men they pass as they go, and introducing Harry to wizards whose names are forgotten as soon as he learns them. “How big is the crew?” Harry asks, once they’re on board. 

“Akseli usually sails with somewhere between sixteen and twenty. He has bunks for twenty, but only three fully enclosed cabins. Akseli sleeps in one and the other two are reserved for couples.”

They pick their way across the deck, crowded with boxes of food and equipment, through a heavy door and down a metal staircase. “The living quarters are down this staircase. There are a number of stairways that lead to the freezers, the engine room, and to the trawl doors in the back.”

Harry wasn’t quite sure what to picture, but what he finds is an open space with several metal tables soldered to the floor, and around it sets of bunks that aren’t entirely enclosed but sectioned off with dividing walls. Harry peeks into one of the bunk spaces—he wouldn’t call it a room since it looks out onto the main space—and finds a top and bottom bunk against a back wall, shelves forming part of an outer wall lending some privacy to the space from the main area, and no door.

“Eetu,” Draco says from behind him, and Harry ducks out in time to find himself confronted with Draco’s ex. That’s how Harry has come to think of him, regardless of what Draco says about whether they were or weren’t in a relationship. 

“Hello, Eetu,” Harry says. He’s determined to be friendly with Eetu because he seems like a nice man, and Draco obviously trusts him. And because he owes Draco that much. He has no reason not to like him so far, other than the irrational and insane jealousy he feels every time he pictures the two of them having sex.

“Welcome. What do you think of the accommodations?” Eetu asks. Harry had pictured small and close, but he hadn’t quite imagined they’d have so little privacy. Before he can answer, Eetu says, “I keep telling Uncle he needs to build cabins down here. The dormitory is barbaric. But we make the best of it.” 

“Speaking of which,” Draco says, “I wonder if you would bunk with Harry? I think it would be better for all concerned.”

Eetu looks surprised, but he masks it quickly. “Is this okay with you, Harry?” 

Harry does his best to smile as he mutters, “Yes, fine.” 

Eetu eyes Draco as though he’s trying to understand what’s happened in the last twenty-four hours, but then shrugs and agrees. “I’m in there,” he says, pointing to a set of bunks beside the ones Harry already examined. “Do you mind sleeping on top?” 

“No,” Harry says, because what can he say? It isn’t that he minds, it’s that he’s a combination of out of his element, overwhelmed by the extent to which his personal space is about to be shrunk to the size of a tiny bunk, and also sad that he forced Draco to put a wall—well, more accurately, a half-wall—between them. 

Draco takes a top bunk across the main space from them, which is about as far away as he can be. Harry notices, though, that they’ll still see each other from their doorless spaces. Now he understands what Draco meant when he said there wouldn’t be much distance between them regardless of where they slept. 

Once they’ve stored their bags, Draco gives him a tour, starting with the three cabins. “Helve and Emel will be about somewhere. They sleep in one of the cabins. I’ll introduce you when we find them.” He shows Harry the loos, points out the single shower stall, and then brings Harry to the galley where they find a wizard who looks not much older than they are, already aproned with short hair under a skullcap. Draco introduces him as Tapio, and tells him that it’s Harry’s virgin sail.

“He’s a decent cook. You might be able to use his help,” Draco says.

Harry is pretty good at reading people and he gets a whiff of distrust from Tapio, whose nod is non-committal.

“Anything I can do,” Harry says in Finnish, hoping to ingratiate himself a bit. Not that he cares tremendously what this man thinks of him, but he doesn’t want his presence to be difficult for Draco. 

Tapio responds in Finnish with a list of complaints Harry can hardly follow, not because of the language barrier, but because they’re so specific. “Maybe you can convince Akseli he’ll live without a pound of red meat a day for two months. I don’t have enough chanterelles here to fill two pasties and he expects me to feed this crew with ten pounds of rye until October!” 

Draco doesn’t appear fazed by the outburst, and Harry decides perhaps this is Tapio’s thing and he shouldn’t take it personally. 

“Would you like to make a list? I can certainly do my best,” Draco says, nothing but patience.

“We sail in three hours!” Tapio exclaims.

“Someone can make a run. We’ll be in Denmark in a few weeks, too,” Draco says, which reminds Harry that he really should know more about their itinerary.

Tapio’s complaints dissolve into mutters and he agrees to write a list. In the meantime, Draco finishes Harry’s tour of the living quarters. There isn’t much ground to cover, but there are endless closets, storage spaces, and metal fixtures with new names to serve old functions.

Once they have Tapio’s food supply list, Draco takes Harry back on deck. Harry observes as Draco conducts a diplomatic conversation with Akseli and convinces him to compromise on about three-quarters of Tapio’s list. They send the youngest looking wizard on board to the market to buy what he can. 

“Tapio is an ethical vegan and Akseli is almost exclusively carnivore,” Draco explains to Harry once the chore is done. “They have this argument on every trip.” 

“Why do they keep working together?” Harry asks. It seems like a terrible mismatch.

“Tapio is Akseli’s third cousin. He’s also an incredible cook. And Akseli’s a pushover, so Tapio will get his vegetables and grains in the end.”

Draco and Harry spend the next hour helping to unload supplies. Harry marvels at the scene of wizards and witches labouring with nothing but their own hands and strength over such a task, realising as he strains unused muscles that it’s been ages since he lifted something heavy without the aid of magic. He tries to focus on his own tasks, but he can’t stop himself watching Draco work. Next to Eetu, Draco’s clearly one of the strongest wizards on board, and his combination of brute strength and grace are entrancing. 

With the sun up, the air warms quickly, and although there are clouds in the sky, the rain holds off. By Harry’s count, there are fourteen wizards and three witches among the crew, including Harry. He’s introduced to Helve and Emel, who turn out to be even younger than Harry. He’s not sure why he pictured them older. Probably because he’s been told they can help him and he always pairs older and wiser. They’re a rosy-cheeked couple in their twenties, and their energy is infectious. They both laugh easily at jokes they trade with the other crew members, and in less than an hour he already thinks of them as the life of the party.

This isn’t going to be a party, though. While the crew is friendly as they work, no one is idle. The last of the supplies are being stored in their holds throughout the vessel when the boy who was sent for Tapio’s additional food supplies appears in the market square pushing a large cart laden with sacks and boxes. Harry joins Emel and Eetu to help the boy, Valde, and by the time they’ve delivered the food to Tapio, Draco appears in the galley. “Anchors away. Come on deck, Harry.”

Harry feels a frisson of excitement and clops up the stairs behind Draco to join most of the crew on deck as they work to untie the boat and motor out of the harbour. The boat engines roar to life and Harry is eager to help, but Draco tells him to stay out of the way. “There’s plenty of time to learn. Just watch for now,” he says. 

So Harry does watch. He watches merchants setting up their market stalls and the square come to life. He watches the other witches and wizards at their work. But mostly he watches Draco, who handles the ropes that had moored the boat and is obviously the leader on deck while Akseli pilots the boat and Eetu navigates from up above. Draco doesn’t bark orders but instead he guides less experienced crew gently. It isn’t that Harry is surprised, but rather he’s surprised by how much Draco’s competence turns him on. He regrets the way his desire for Draco has overridden his common sense, but it doesn’t change the fact that he’s still pulled to him unlike anything he’s ever experienced before. 

Harry leans on the rail as the boat pulls away from the dock, watching the harbour recede, first slowly as they manoeuvre out of the basin and away from the other vessels, and then faster as they get some distance and head out into the sea. They pass numerous small islands that dot the coast of Helsinki, including Suomenlinna, which Harry has read about, and more as they get further out into the Gulf of Finland. Harry loses count by the time they’ve passed the last of them. Eventually, Draco comes and leans on the rail next to him, watching the last signs of land recede. The day is heating up, but there’s a breeze as they speed along and it cools Harry’s overheated skin.

“You’d better spell yourself against the sun,” Draco says. “Or there’s probably some Muggle sunscreen somewhere on board.”

“Am I allowed? What about you?” Harry asks.

“I’ve got a base tan,” Draco says, and gives him a broad, teasing smile that’s so unlike him. That’s when Harry takes a good look at Draco and notices how relaxed he is. Like he came unmoored from an invisible weight when they unmoored the boat. “And yes, you’re allowed, though most of the crew won’t. They’re not rigid about the rules, other than the ones applied to fishing itself, but they try to avoid obvious forms of above-board magic so they don’t forget themselves in Muggle harbours.”

“Do you love this?” Harry asks, gesturing to encompass the boat and the sea and the life he leads here.

Draco shrugs. “Parts of it. Not all of it. I’ve missed being on the water, the salt air.”

“What don’t you miss?” Harry wonders how someone as fastidious as he always considered Draco to be manages aboard a boat with one shower and sixteen other sweaty crewmates. Not that he’s seemed anything like the hothouse flower he was in school, but there’s still something slightly refined about him, even in jeans and a T-shirt.

Draco is thoughtful for a moment and then says, “The loneliness. I don’t miss that.”

“How do you get lonely when you’re never alone?”

“I think mostly by not knowing myself. Or not trusting myself.”

Harry isn’t certain he understands what Draco means by that, especially because the man he’s gotten to know over the past month seems so self-possessed. “Do you still feel that way?”

Draco shakes his head. “I don’t think so. Something’s changed. I needed to go home, I guess."

“I’m glad you did,” Harry says. 

____________________

The first day at sea doesn’t require much work from the crew. They’re not in fishing waters yet, and so they only need a few hands on deck for look-out and navigation, and then cleaning chores are divvied for after meals. A week’s work rotation hangs on the wall below deck, and Harry sees he’s going to shadow Draco, Eetu, Emel, and Helve on six shifts of varying tasks, most of which involve cleaning or food prep he can handle without instruction. His free time is scheduled to correspond with Draco’s, presumably so they can work on the book. 

More than half the crew sits down for what seems an enormous meal to Harry at eleven in the morning, and Valde, who turns out to be Tapio’s seventeen-year-old nephew, and thus some relation to Akseli and Eetu that Harry can’t work out, carries food up to the deckhands and Akseli on the bridge.

Helve and Emel join Draco and Harry at one of the tables, and they teach him a spell to ward off seasickness. Sitting below deck with only small portholes set too high to see the horizon, the rocking of the boat is already getting to Harry. Draco pulls out his wand and shows him the simple Latin spell, Fortem Stomachum, which Harry can probably manage without a wand. He did pack his, but he’s left it in his bag.

Then he watches, fascinated, as Helve shows him a wandless version. The words she speaks aren’t Finnish, and she raises her hands as though she’s pulling energy from beneath her and places them on her stomach. The floor of the boat or the water? Harry isn’t sure. The words are spoken under her breath and Harry doesn’t catch them, though they clearly carry the same gist as Draco’s Latin.

“Can you teach that to me?” Harry asks.

“That’s Sámi magic,” she says in Finnish. “Akseli said you might be interested.”

Harry has been so reluctant to share anything about his magic with anyone for so long that his instinct is to come up with an excuse for his interest. But he’s made a promise to Draco. And what does he have to lose? These people don’t know him and have no investment in the past that brought him here. So he tells her, “I don’t need a wand to do magic anymore, but I also don’t always understand where the magic comes from. I can’t always control it.”

“And you think learning our magic might help?” she asks. Harry has no idea what the right answer to that is. He doesn’t know if it’ll help. 

“I don’t know. We thought it might,” he says, glancing at Draco, because this was his idea after all. “Perhaps because you channel your magic without a wand, you could teach me some method for controlling mine.”

She nods and Emel says, “It’s possible. It depends on the nature of your magic and where it comes from.”

“I wish I knew,” Harry says. 

“We can try to help,” Helve says. “You’ll need to tell us what happened that might have changed your magic.”

“It’s a long story,” Draco says, saving Harry from having to speak. “Maybe you can find some time over the next day or two and he can begin to tell it to you.”

Harry nods and swallows around the dread at divulging his death to near strangers, but that was the moment that changed things, so he’s resolved to give this a chance. Perhaps sharing his story will lead to some understanding. What he really wants to know is how the story ends, because he’s been waiting fifteen years and sees no sign of the ending he’s craved since that day. 

Emel smiles and swings an arm around Helve’s shoulder. “You’ll know where to find us! Follow the fun.”

Draco laughs. “Follow the ear-piercing sounds of heavy metal. Emel’s taste in music will drive you into the ocean.”

“It’s folk-metal, Draco. You never understand the difference.”

The banter continues and Harry enjoys watching the friends swap barbs and eventually turn the conversation to catching up since they last saw each other. Draco hasn’t sailed with Akseli, nor with most of his crew, since January. Draco told Harry once that he has more acquaintances than friends, but Helve and Emel are clearly friends, as are Akseli and Eetu. Harry wonders if Draco isn’t surrounded by friends, in fact.

After lunch, Harry throws himself into the cleaning chores he’s been assigned. His chores are below deck so he’s allowed to use his magic, and for once he isn’t self-conscious about doing so without a wand.

Akseli and Eetu join most of the crew for dinner, and Draco takes over piloting the boat while they eat. Harry is quiet without Draco there to ease things for him socially, and he appreciates the lack of attention he gets, allowing him to observe his shipmates at leisure. Apart from Helve and Emel, there’s one other married couple on board, a pair of witches who occupy Akseli’s third cabin. They're called Nora and Eva, and they’re Norwegian. From the conversation he overhears, it sounds like they have connections in Norway that allow Akseli to fish in the Norwegian sea and sell some of his catch in Bergen before they return to Finland.

Most of the crew are Finnish, but apart from the two Norwegian witches, there’s a wizard from Estonia and another from the Russian side of the Lapland border. What strikes Harry about the group is that so much of their talk is about their work—about the voyage, the route they’ll sail, the fishing haul they expect to take in, and how they plan to minimise bycatch. It’s all so new to Harry, and he wonders if there are English wizards and witches with communities like this, built around Muggle occupations with Muggle concerns. There must be, and it occurs to him how narrow his experience of the wizarding world has been, going from Hogwarts directly to the Ministry and surrounded by people constantly engaged in Ministry politics. It’s also light-years from the corseted world of purebloods Draco was brought up in. Which must be a large part of why he’s drawn to it.

At night, Harry goes up on deck to get some fresh air and ends up joining Draco on the bridge. The Lunastus nearly pilots itself, so they’re at ease to talk and create a plan for the book. Harry has reviewed Draco’s outline and only has a few questions and suggestions. For his part, Draco tells Harry he’s going to need to interview him in much greater detail about each of the passages in his life that form the narrative framework of the book. As tired as Harry is of talking about himself, that’s what he’s here for so he doesn’t object.

The sun hasn’t dipped below the horizon yet and won’t until after ten o’clock, but it’s nearing that hour and the clouds glow red and orange around them. The rocking of the boat motoring over calm waters is a literal motion to match the metaphorical ways he feels like his life has been set in motion since he met Draco. “What do you think so far?” Draco asks him. 

“This is beautiful,” Harry says. “It’s a lot to take in. A lot of work. A lot of new people. It’s hard for me to imagine what drew you to this life in the first place, but I see it suits you.”

Draco is contemplative and Harry takes advantage of his far-off stare to admire his lovely face. They’ve been careful not to sit too close, but just being contained on the bridge together excites Harry’s magic under his skin.

“I’m not sure I was drawn to this life in particular,” Draco says. “I fell in love with fishing, but what we do aboard this boat has almost nothing to do with fishing the way I’d learned it. I think it was merely that I was invited along, and I had nowhere to be. And then I learned very quickly how much quieter my mind is when I’m exhausted by physical labour.”

That makes sense to Harry, and he wonders if he might have felt differently in the wake of the war if he’d gotten away from it all. It feels like it’s too late now, that he’s spent too much time yearning to return to the place Dumbledore offered to take him to get attached to any part of this life. He’s here, though, and while he waits to find his way back, he’s glad to have had this time with Draco and to see something of the world. They’re not far from Estonia on one side and Finland on the other, and yet from high up on the bridge as the sun goes down, the water looks endless like it could flow down the curve of the earth and never stop.

____________________

That night, Harry’s sleep is restless. He’s conscious of all the other breathing bodies in the open bunks, and especially of Eetu just below him. It’s a good thing the bunks are soldered into the wall, because he imagines otherwise Eetu would only have to turn over to shake Harry off the thin mattress that covers the top bunk. The movement of the boat itself at times feels like it might tumble Harry from bed. He considers enclosing himself in the dark quiet of a spell, even softening the surface under him, but instead lets himself remain aware of the crew around him and the hardness under him, the changing of watch shifts at three in the morning, and of Draco sleeping across the room from him, like he’s magnetic north to Harry’s internal compass.

He dozes on and off and rises anxious to get to work when his shift begins at six o’clock. Tapio serves coffee black and an appetising mix of cereals, berries, and eggs for breakfast, and then Harry follows Draco to inspect the trawl nets. They’ll wait until they find a school of herring to drop one of the nets, but he and Draco are responsible for ensuring the nets are sound, positioned, and ready to go when they find what they’re looking for.

Much of the day is idle waiting once they’ve done their work. Draco sits with Harry in the lower stern of the boat near the closed trawl doors with parchment and quill and takes notes while Harry recounts Uncle Vernon’s efforts to keep his Hogwarts invitation from him. He tells him of Hagrid’s eventual rescuing arrival on his birthday, and Draco pauses in his writing. “It’s almost your birthday!” Draco says, putting the date together in his mind.

“I guess it is.” Harry has grown to loathe his birthday and does his best to ignore it. He hopes a mild response is less provocative than a dramatic one. 

“Can we celebrate?”

“Please don’t,” Harry says.

Draco looks like he wants to ask a question, but he lets it go. Instead they sit together in the near bottom of the boat, the vibrations of the engine roaring through them as Harry recounts his introduction to Hogwarts and they both recall the day they met. 

____________________

They will only trawl concentrated schools of herring, to limit the bycatch they kill, and no school appears during their shift, so the nets remain in the boat. In the afternoon, at Draco’s encouraging, Harry goes looking for Emel and Helve. He hears loud music, definitely in the heavy metal family, coming from their cabin, and knocks. The music clicks off and Emel comes to the door in boxers and a T-shirt.

“Sorry,” Harry says. “Is this a bad time?”

“Not at all. I did a late watch shift last night but we’re up. Come in.”

The cabin is small, but there’s room for a double bed and a desk with a chair. Helve invites him to sit in the chair and the two of them perch at the edge of their unmade bed.

“Let’s talk,” Helve says in Finnish. She’s in a robe and her hair is in plaits. Harry’s grateful for their informality. It’s slightly less intimidating asking them for help. 

“Can I hear your language?” Harry asks. 

Helve looks confused, but answers in an unfamiliar language, just a few words. “Would you mind talking a little more? It doesn’t matter what you say.” She does, until Harry begins to recognise the sounds and the words begin to make sense in his head. He responds to her in Sámi. “Thank you. I think I’m getting it now.”

“Amazing,” says Emel, speaking in Sámi as well. “You have language magic.”

“I’d never heard of it,” Harry says. “But yes, I think I do. I’m not sure how.” 

“Let’s start with when your magic changed,” Helve says. “Draco wrote to Akseli that you underwent a trial, and that you’ve struggled since.”

So Harry tells them. He doesn’t go into great detail about his life leading up to the war, but he sketches his hunt for Voldemort’s horcruxes and his discovery that he himself was one, and then his death. He tells them much of what he’s told Draco. It’s still difficult, but it’s a little easier this time, both for having shared it once, and because there’s only interest and not sadness on their faces. And then he explains that he came back and found his magic altered. It felt wild, not remotely requiring a wand, and sometimes with a mind of its own. He describes how he’s learned to pull it back, but occasionally fails.

They listen raptly, and when he’s finished, Helve holds out her hand and invites Harry to take it. He does, and she wraps both hands around his. He feels a very small hum in their connection, nothing like what he feels near Draco, but it’s there. It almost feels as though she’s actively pushing at his magic with her own.

“You have passed between the realms, and magic from the realm beyond is different,” Helve says. “You can’t travel to Death and back and not change on the journey. You’ve brought back magic unfamiliar to you. If I had to guess, I’d say there’s something magnetic about it. Almost as though you were magnetised from the passage. You draw things to you? Objects, animals, people?”

Harry nods, surprised to hear it put that way, but it’s a puzzle piece fitting into place. He wonders how many people could have explained this to him if he’d only asked. 

“You can repel them as well.”

“Can I? I haven’t noticed that.”

“I think you could learn. Attract and repel. Perhaps you have no practice turning people away,” Helve says, and Harry wonders if this is true. It feels true. 

He’s shocked by how quickly she’s recognised something in him that seems obvious now. He’s even thought that his attraction to Draco pulls him in like a magnet, but he hadn’t considered that he himself might literally be one. “What do you think I draw to me?” 

“I don’t know,” Helve says. “You could probably say better than I, but I would guess you draw things that you want.” 

Harry nods, wondering how much damage he’s done by recklessly pulling Draco towards him. Who else has he kept close when he's meant to be pushing them away? “I shouldn’t have come back,” he says, giving voice to the thought that recurs endlessly to him. “It was unnatural.”

Helve squeezes his hand and then lets him go. “I wouldn’t say that,” she says. “You aren’t unnatural. You may have suffered for the journey, but you’re very much alive, and there is no reason you shouldn’t be.”

“Helve and I left Lapland when we were young,” Emel says. “We’ve lived many years in Helsinki, or at sea. Our magic has changed as we’ve travelled, as we’ve gotten further from our home. But we both still have family there. It isn’t so unlike your journey. Both places have meaning to you, and you’ve brought something from one to the other, but you no less belong here than you’ll belong there someday.”

Harry considers this. He wonders if they could possibly miss their family as much as he misses his, misses what he never had. And then the obvious difference is that they could travel home and back in this lifetime. Harry is stuck on one side of an impenetrable veil. 

He does appreciate the attempt at an analogy, though. He hates feeling freakish, and at least they don’t see him that way. “Do you think you can teach me to control my magic?”

Helve shrugs. “We could try. It doesn’t come from the same place as ours. But it’s possible that our practices could help you. We draw on energy around us instead of focusing energy into words or a wand.”

That sounds to Harry closer to what he’s been doing for the last fifteen years. It gives him some hope. “I’d be willing to try anything you’d be willing to teach me.” 

“Let us get dressed and we can start your first lesson now,” Emel says.

____________________

That night, lying in his bunk, straining to watch Draco readying for bed across the room, Harry runs over what he’s learned today in his mind. Helve won’t say for certain, but Harry knows he must have drawn Draco to him, perhaps in ways that are more than purely physical. The unfairness of it prickles at the back of his throat and brings tears to his eyes.

Draco’s broad shoulders are silhouetted in Harry’s view. He’s bunking with Tapio and the two of them speak in low voices as Tapio settles into the bottom bunk and Draco strips off his jumper. Even now, after Draco has asked for distance, Harry can feel a part of him reaching out as though it—he—could grasp Draco and haul him close. He had no business forcing himself into Draco’s life, and now he’s made a connection that it will only hurt them both to sever. And he does plan to sever it. He doesn’t know when or how, but he’s always planned to exit as soon as he sees his chance.

There’s the book, and the small matter of them being trapped on a vessel in the middle of the sea for months. But perhaps he can learn to repel Draco, as Helve said. He could learn to control the flip side of the magnet. Perhaps he can find a way to push Draco away. The thought of it cuts him, but he deserves the pain. He deserves it even if he carries it into death. 

Eetu breaks into his thoughts when he comes in from his shift, blocking Harry’s view of Draco. He acknowledges Harry in the dim light that escapes from behind him. Harry rubs at his eyes and tries not to betray the turmoil he feels as he peers from his bunk at Eetu.

“You’ll need your sleep. Tomorrow we fish, I think,” Eetu tells him.

Harry clears his throat. “Really? That’s exciting.”

“We’ll see what you think tomorrow. It’s a lot of death,” Eetu says. He undresses down to his boxers and sits on the bottom bunk. Harry glances across the way and sees that Draco has disappeared into the dark of his own bunk. Forcing himself to let go of the pull he feels to Draco, Harry leans over the edge of his bed so he can continue the conversation with Eetu.

“Does it bother you?” Harry asks. Even in the emotional state he’s in, he’s curious. Draco has told him so much about the ways they work to minimise their impact on fish populations, but he’s never mentioned being bothered by the ultimate goal, which is to catch the fish.

“The excess bothers me. The collateral death of fish we don’t mean to catch bothers me. We do our best to limit both, but I would prefer we do more.”

“Draco says you try your best to return living bycatch to the sea?”

“Yes, but the nets kill many. It’s not a perfect system.” 

“It sounds like you try to limit the harm,” Harry says.

Eetu stretches out on his bunk. He looks about three sizes too big for it. “We do. I would like to do more.” 

He’s quiet after that and Harry finally begins to drift to sleep when Eetu says, “You are hurting Draco.” 

Harry freezes at the words, all of the ways he’s been berating himself for his behaviour summed up in one neat little sentence. 

“I don’t think you intended to do that,” Eetu goes on, “but you should decide what to do about it.” There’s nothing harsh or scolding in his tone but the words hit him hard. The tears that Harry had bitten back earlier well and fall.

He nods wordlessly into the dark above his bunk and rasps out, “Yes.”

“Good night, Harry.”

“Good night,” Harry says, and maybe it has something to do with regret, but he finally falls into a deep sleep. 

____________________

They hit their first school of herring the next day, and Harry stands beside Emel as he sorts quickly through the catch after the net has been hauled into the boat. As Eetu warned him, many, maybe most of the fish are already dead, suffocated in the nets, and identifying living bycatch quickly looks like it requires an expert eye and fast hands. The catch is massive and five wizards and witches all work hard at the task in the brief window they have. Harry’s anxious to help, but he’s relegated to watching until he understands how to spot the unwanted fish. 

When it’s clear there’s no more life in the nets, they begin the tedious work of sorting the dead bycatch and moving the herring into the freezers. By the time his shift ends, Harry’s ready to take a break and clear his head. He’s pretty sure there must be a way to use magic to keep the fish they don’t want out of the net in the first place, but he’s not sure what it is, or if Akseli would allow it. In the meantime, he’s expecting to dream about dead fish eyes for some nights to come.

It isn’t a decision he’s given tremendous forethought, but when he meets up with Draco to talk about the book that evening, he remembers Eetu’s words from the night before and the only thing he can think to do differently than he’s done is to begin to give Draco more of the space he’s already asked for, to begin to push him away. 

Akseli has lent them his cabin for the conversation. Draco sits at the desk and Harry chooses a spot on the bed as far from Draco as he can get. He resists every urge he has to draw closer, averts his eyes when he can so he doesn’t have to meet Draco’s gaze, and declines every opening for conversation. He answers Draco’s questions, narrates his own story, but when Draco asks him about his first experience hauling in herring, he shrugs. When Draco asks him how he’s sleeping, he tells him fine. And when Draco asks him if something is wrong, he tells him no. It would be useless to imagine Draco doesn’t notice, but whatever he thinks about Harry’s behaviour, he says nothing, even as it continues into the next day, and the day after that. 

Harry’s birthday passes without a single word said about it. His friends have learned over the years not to owl him. And he’s grateful Draco honoured his wish not to celebrate. It saves him having to work out what to say when Draco wishes him a happy birthday, because he never does. It would be foolish to feel sad about isolation he’s building around himself because it’s necessary. Sadness creeps in though, or perhaps it’s exhaustion. Exhaustion from fighting so much of himself to keep Draco at arm’s length. 

He continues to submit to Draco’s interviews, but he spends any other free time he has learning Helve and Emel’s wandless magic in their cabin. He settles into habits that keep him away from Draco. He begins sitting with Valde at meals and tries to take solace in his youthful energy and eagerness to learn the trade, and the life, that Akseli is offering him. Valde asks endless questions of the more experienced crew, many of which Harry would ask himself if he weren’t too conscious of his presence as an intrusion. And Harry does feel increasingly like an intruder. The wedge he’s driven between himself and Draco sharpens the fact that he’s come aboard this boat as Draco’s guest.

On days when his silent struggle to find a place for himself among Draco’s friends and work-mates overwhelms him, he volunteers in the galley with Tapio or relieves the crew of their more menial chores to shrink his free time. Each night he peers through the darkness into Draco’s bunk. Eetu has stopped speaking to him except when absolutely necessary, and he knows he deserves it. But Eetu is the one who said he should decide what to do about Draco, and Harry has decided.

On their second week at sea, they run into a school of herring in the early hours of the morning and Eetu rouses Harry to tell him he’s needed to help pull in the catch. As soon as Harry’s awake, he notices the heavy pitch of the boat, rocking unlike anything he’s felt yet. “It’s our first weather,” Eetu says. “Mind your balance.” And then he leaves Harry to dress quickly and join the other hands at the stern of the boat where they’ll haul in the nets.

Up on deck, Harry’s anorak provides little protection against the whipping rain, and the choppy sea sends him stumbling more than once as he makes his way to the deck above the trawl doors. Eetu is there, along with Valde, Nora, Akseli, and Draco. Draco’s greeting is terse, as it has been increasingly since Harry started avoiding him. Eva must be piloting the boat since she’s the only other crew member aboard, besides Draco and Eetu, who relieves Akseli on the bridge.

Akseli has treated Harry much the same as he treats any of the less experienced crew members since they left Helsinki, though he can’t be unaware of the tension Harry’s created between himself and Draco. Tonight, he steadies Harry as the boat rolls with a firm grip on his shoulder. “You’ll get used to it. We’re not expecting a bad storm.”

None of the others seem troubled by the weather, and he marvels at the way Valde carries on his usual excited pace of questions even as they heave and lurch in the dark, wind and rain lashing their faces as they raise the net and begin the frantic task of freeing live bycatch and returning it to the sea below. Harry has learned enough to be able to help, though he doesn’t have the others’ skill. He’s watched Nora at this twice now and her hands move faster than Harry’s eye. Valde is still learning as well, though it’s his second voyage and he’s easily more skilled than Harry.

Draco works at Harry’s side and is nearly as adept as Nora. Even with the sensory distractions of the storm, the deck moving under his feet, and the fish in his gloved hands choking on air, Harry is aware of the electrical energy that dances out from him towards Draco when they’re so close. There’s electricity in the air from the storm already, and Harry’s magic seems to draw on the crackling energy, alight at Draco’s proximity after Harry’s carefully enforced distance. 

Draco doesn’t break from the task until the last bycatch, alive and dead, is removed from the nets, but as soon as there’s a moment to catch their breath, he turns on Harry, his eyes in shadow from the spotlight above them and his expression searching. He doesn’t speak, but Harry hears the unspoken words. _Why are you doing this?_

Harry thought he knew the answer to that question, but the beating of his heart, which he has thought a curse for so long, seems increasingly a rhythm that Draco controls. Harry’s not sure he’ll ever succeed in repelling him in this lifetime.


	13. Chapter 13

They’ve been fishing the Baltic for more than three weeks when they make their way through the Danish Straights into the Kattegat Sea heading towards the port in Aalborg. Draco had looked forward to being in Aalborg with Harry, showing him the Fjordbyen on the Limnfjord, what used to be a small community of fishing sheds now converted into little homes. A couple of years ago, Draco learned about a family of Danish witches and wizards who lived and fished there in the 1930s, and he’s imagined sharing the story with Harry the way he shared his book chapters. But Harry has put more than the little distance Draco asked for between them. He’s put miles, all the more painful because they continue to share the same confined physical space.

Harry has managed to build distance between them so substantial that some days it seems Draco can’t see Harry through it. He imagines that if he tried to reach out and touch Harry he’d bloody his knuckles on invisible barbed wire.

That first day Harry began to pull away from him, Draco put it down to a mood. He tried to remember how difficult his first sail had been, how enormous an adjustment the small quarters had been, the nature of the labour, and the increasing distance from land. It would be incredible if Harry didn’t struggle with it, he told himself.

Except Harry hasn’t cut everyone off. He keeps to himself increasingly, but he works with Emel and Helve in their cabin almost every day. Valde has latched onto him mainly because Harry is one of the few wizards aboard who seems to have endless patience for him. And Harry’s gotten friendly with Tapio from the time they spend in the galley together. Draco hears them talking in Finnish and burns with envy at even the slight camaraderie they share. It’s all he can do not to grill Tapio at night for details of his conversations with Harry.

Akseli has surely noticed the strain, but he’s said nothing of it to Draco, perhaps because he thinks it’s not his business, or perhaps because he doesn’t know how to help or whether he should. Eetu is the only one who’s spoken to Draco directly about the estrangement, and his advice, though possibly sage, has proven nearly impossible to accept. Apart from the single storm they hit a week ago, they’ve had mild weather in the Baltic, with as many clear days as rainy ones, and relatively calm waters. Standing at the bow of the boat under a starry night sky while Akseli navigates the Lunastus up the Jutland Peninsula, Eetu tells him, “I don’t believe he doesn’t care, Draco. I think he’s pushed you away because he does. But that tells me he is not well.”

“He isn’t. I’ve known that all along. His closest friends said so. My own mother told me so. He’s said it himself more convincingly than any of them could. But I wanted to help. I even thought I had helped.” Draco has to wonder how deluded he’s been to think that writing the book for Harry would be enough. Even more painful is that he’s had moments of letting himself believe that what was growing between them might be love, and that someday _it_ might be enough. Enough to tie Harry more firmly to this life. “I’m a fool, Eetu.”

Eetu’s heavy hand lands on his shoulder. The weight of his touch is welcome for its offer of comfort, even as every nerve ending in Draco’s body feels frayed from wanting a very different touch. “He’s made a choice, Draco. I do not understand how he could have made this one, but I know that you can’t make different choices for him. He can only make those for himself.”

It’s similar to what his mother said a month ago on the night that Draco decided to write Harry’s book. He’d heard her, even thought that he understood, and yet he’d written to Akseli with the vague hope that he could change something for Harry by taking the burden of telling his own story off his shoulders, by showing him that life can move forward. He wanted Harry to try walking through a new door, hoping maybe he’d stop looking back at what he left behind.

Most of the crew arrive on deck when Aalborg comes into view the next morning, Harry among them. They’ll be here a single night, time to get food supplies and sell the fish they’ve stored. Each of them is expected to put in some work, but they’ll also have hours in the afternoon and evening to themselves. Draco has tried not to seek Harry out. He’s ceased trying to rekindle the connection of friendship they had. But he brought Harry here, and even though it’s Harry who’s pushing him away, he feels responsible for his well-being.

So he goes to Harry’s side at the rail as they motor into the harbour. Harry's hair is a wild mane now, and the scruff on his face is heavy, as it is on Draco's. He's gorgeous like this, roughened by the elements and stronger for weeks of work. It breaks Draco's heart not to be able to reach out and touch him. Harry doesn’t acknowledge him, but his magic does, briefly, until the tug that Draco feels so persistently when he’s close to Harry drops away. Almost as though Harry has pulled it back. And maybe he has. Maybe he’s learning to do that. “You should try to get in a run while we’re here. You must miss it.”

Harry does turn to him then, with something that resembles pain in his eyes, bright green in the early morning light. “I do. I will,” he says.

It’s been so long since Harry looked at him at all, let alone let his eyes meet Draco’s, that Draco feels like he could fall into Harry like an abyss. “Get a room, too. You’ll want a real bed, and a shower. I can show you where most of us stay.” 

Harry nods but doesn’t reply, his expression unreadable. Draco wants to say so much more, but he’s been too hurt by Harry to risk it, so he simply soaks up the beautiful lines of Harry’s face and watches him instead of Aalborg until they’re so close to the dock that Draco has to tear himself away to moor the boat.

The crew is split into groups, and, probably deliberately, Akseli sends Harry with the group responsible for gathering supplies and holds Draco back to unload the fish to sell. Draco does his best to forget about Harry for the next couple of hours, helping Akseli make a deal with his usual buyers and then organising the crew to haul the fish off the boat. He’s always sure to work at least as hard as any witch or wizard he’s been asked to supervise, and he’s pleasantly tired from the task when they’ve finally delivered the fish to the market and the group with supplies begin to return with boxes of food.

Draco helps Tapio unload and store the grains, vegetables, and relatively small amount of meat they carry as each arrives. Harry is one of the last to return, and he wordlessly joins Tapio and Draco in the galley to finish putting everything in its place. The silence between them would be awkward if Draco hadn’t grown so accustomed to it, but now he’s grateful for the times when they can work side by side even if he can’t force Harry to talk to him. At least he knows where Harry is, and that he’s safe, and sometimes he listens in to his chatter with others around them. 

When there’s nothing left to do, Tapio heads up on deck and Harry stands in the doorway of the galley, seeming unsure, as though he planned to follow Tapio but hasn’t decided yet where to go. Draco has already made the offer, so he says again, “If you want to follow me, I can show you where many of us will be staying tonight.”

Harry has his back to Draco, but he doesn’t move. His indecision is palpable, and Draco wonders, not for the first time, whether he’s doing the right thing by letting Harry drift away. Maybe he should try harder. But then Harry shakes his head, his back to Draco. “Tapio said he’d show me the way. Thanks.” And then he’s gone.

Draco collects his knapsack and finds only Akseli and Eetu still on board when he gets upstairs. Akseli won’t leave his boat, and Eetu often stays with him to keep him company. Valde is allowed to explore, but will be expected to return to the boat at night as well. No one wants him out at the bars. Draco has stayed on board at times, but he desperately needs a night away. “Will you be okay?” Akseli asks, when Draco tells them he’s off.

“I’ll be fine,” he says, knowing it’s obvious that he’s not fine. But since there’s nothing either of them can do to help, and he’s lost the ability to reach Harry, it does no good to talk about it. Eetu has an amazing capacity for letting him be, so Draco takes advantage of that now and waves a quick goodbye. “I’ll see you both in the morning.”

It’s not half a mile to the modest hotel where most of the crew will spend the night. Draco walks quickly but Tapio and Harry have disappeared into their rooms by the time he arrives. When Draco finds his way to his own room, he collapses on the bed. He’d looked forward to showing the city to Harry. Now all he wants to do is sulk without sixteen wizards and witches watching him do it.

He’s not alone. He has friends he could reach out to, and that revelation has changed him in ways he’s still discovering. But it doesn’t change the fact that he craves solitude at times, and the last few weeks have been so painful that adding an audience into the mix has made it difficult to even know what it is he’s feeling. He’s never been in love before, and while he’s had moments of pure joy around Harry since the reunion, moments when he felt more complete and more completely present than ever in his life, the sense of loss and longing he’s left with now is excruciating. 

He stretches out on the double bed, the mattress welcome after weeks on his hard, little bunk, and stares at the ceiling for an hour, wishing for tears that never come. He hasn’t cried since the day he learned of his father’s death, and sometimes he thinks it would help.

When his thoughts have been running in miserable circles long enough to agitate him, he decides he’s going to work on Harry’s book. He has enough interview material to write several chapters. He’d started using the interviews as an excuse to talk to Harry when he knew he ought to be writing, and with hours alone in his room ahead of him, he might as well get down to it. It’s not as though he’s going to get Harry off his mind, so he ought to put his wallowing to good use. 

He’s written a rough draft of one chapter in addition to the introduction he’d finished before they left. He decides to tackle Harry’s arrival at Hogwarts, and he sets himself up at the little desk in the room with a stack of clean parchment and a quill from his knapsack. Writing about Harry’s life is like visiting his own memories of the past, but now overlaid with and coloured by Harry’s memories. It requires him to excavate memories he buried ages ago, and he finds that seeing those first days and weeks and months at Hogwarts through Harry’s eyes so completely inverts his own memories that he struggles to understand his own motivations. Envy, maybe jealousy, too, had been part of it. Greener than Harry’s eyes. He’d envied Harry Potter’s easy friendships even more than his fame, and he’d been jealous of those who gained Harry's trust. 

Draco loses track of time and is startled to notice it’s dark outside when his room phone rings. It’s Emel calling from down the hall with an invitation to dinner, which Draco declines. A couple of hours later, he’s still working when Helve brings him sausage and potatoes they picked up for him on their way back to the hotel. He’s grateful for the food, and even more so because it allows him to keep working. He’s managed to write the better part of an entire chapter today, which helps him to feel at least that he’s on top of the responsibility he assumed when he agreed to author this book. As painful as the distance between them is, he doesn’t want to let Harry down.

It’s nearly midnight when he decides to put down his quill and get ready for bed. He cleans his teeth and is about to undress when there’s a knock at the door. On the other side is Tapio, looking worn out and worried. “Are you okay?” Draco asks, because he can’t imagine what would bring Tapio to his door this late at night.

“Helve gave me your room number. It’s Harry. Can you help me with him?”

“Help you—” Draco starts.

“He’s drunk. I can’t get him off the pavement,” Tapio says. “He keeps mumbling your name.” 

Shit. He’s not sure how it’s possible for Harry to get seriously drunk given the potent sobering charm he used the night of the reunion, but Draco grabs his room key and follows Tapio downstairs and out onto the street. 

Harry is there, sitting on the ground and slumped against a pole. He hasn't learned to tie his overgrown hair back and his long, dark fringe falls over his face. If it weren’t for the noticeable smell of alcohol as Draco crouches down in front of him, he might look merely asleep. “Harry?” He lays a hand on Harry’s shoulder and tries to rouse him. As soon as he makes contact, a dulled version of the usual hum he gets from Harry warms his hand. “Can you get up?”

Harry lifts his head until his hair falls back and stares up at Draco. “So drunk,” he says.

“So I gather. Let’s get you off the street before you get arrested for drunk and disorderly.” Although, he’s not being particularly disorderly. He’s barely conscious. A sickening worry settles in Draco’s stomach as he wraps Harry’s arm around his neck and pulls him up by the armpit, lifting him to his feet. Sort of. What could possibly possess him to drink like this? He’s never seen Harry drink other than the night of the reunion. Some of the crew drink wine or beer with meals, even get mildly drunk occasionally, but everyone on Akseli’s boat works too hard for there to be time for serious drunkenness. Harry doesn’t drink at all as far as Draco can tell.

Draco all but carries Harry off the street and into the hotel, Tapio hovering beside him. “He wouldn’t budge for me,” Tapio says, and Draco doesn’t doubt it. Harry may be thin, but if he wants to be a stubborn, dead weight, he would be immovable. 

“Can you show me his room?”

Draco moves through reception as quickly as possible, hoping not to call attention to Harry’s state as he drags him through, and Tapio rushes ahead of them to call the lift. It’s a short ride up to the third floor, and Tapio leads the way to Harry’s door, which turns out to be only a few down from Draco's. Draco props Harry against the wall beside his door. “Harry, your key?”

“Probably in his pocket,” Tapio says.

Harry’s head moves in something resembling a nod. “Can you fish it out, Harry?” Draco says, not wanting to feel up Harry’s arse in these circumstances if he can help it.

“You. Please,” Harry slurs.

Draco experiences a flash of annoyance—hurt, anger even—at Harry’s words after treating him the way he has for weeks, but it’s pointless to express it with Harry blotto and Tapio there to witness. So he tries again, as sternly as he can. “Harry, get the key out of your pocket.” 

“’Kay, ‘kay,” he says, and fumbles around in his back pocket until he finally comes up with the card.

Draco unlocks the door, manoeuvres Harry through in the dark, and flops him onto the bed.

“Is he going to be okay?” Tapio asks, clearly worried. He flips on a lamp and closes the door behind them. “I should have stopped him. I didn’t realise he’d drunk so much.”

“It’s not your fault,” Draco says, because he’s certain that Harry set out to get plastered or it wouldn’t have happened, and probably no one was going to stop him. “Why don’t you get some rest, Tapio. Thanks for taking care of him. I’ll make sure he gets to sleep safely.” 

“You’re sure?” Tapio lingers by the door, reluctant to leave. “I know he’s unhappy,” Tapio says, and it’s a gut punch to hear it from someone who by all rights shouldn’t yet know that about Harry. It’s obvious though, probably to everyone. “I don’t know why.”

“It’s complicated,” Draco says, unable to take his eyes off Harry, who appears to be asleep already, slumped on his side on the bed, rumpled shirt and jeans and his feet in trainers hanging off the end. “Just be his friend, if you can.” 

“I have tried,” Tapio says. “Let me know if you need anything. I’m right next door.”

Draco forces himself to acknowledge Tapio before he leaves, reminded that he’s likely had a difficult night of it. “Sleep well, Tapio. I’ll see you in the morning.”

When Tapio leaves, Draco takes a few calming breaths before he kneels beside Harry to pull his trainers off. It’s been so long since he’s touched Harry that even the brush of his knuckles on Harry’s ankles sends energy vibrating through him. Harry’s lightly dressed and on his side so he’s probably safe to tuck in and leave for the night, but Draco can’t bring himself to do that. He fetches a glass of water from the bathroom and puts it by Harry’s bedside, then tries to position Harry further onto the bed so there’s no danger he’ll fall off.

Harry harrumphs as Draco moves him, and his eyes slit open, piercing green and a tiny pinprick of black. “Draco,” he says. And then he says, “Shit, sorry,” but it comes out so slowly that Draco almost loses his meaning.

“Why, Harry?” Draco asks, and he doesn’t know if he’s asking about the drunkenness or about everything else, but it’s the question he’s wanted Harry to answer for weeks. Maybe since the night of the reunion. Why chase this thing between us if you only mean to push me away? Why brighten my life if you’re so hell-bent on dimming your own?

Harry turns his head from side to side in what looks to be a refusal to answer, but then he says, so softly that Draco almost doesn’t hear him, “Love you, and ‘s not fair.”

They’re not words he ever expected to hear from Harry, and it’s excruciating to hear them said as though they’re an albatross. The tears that Draco had wished would come earlier prick his eyes now. “Not fair to whom, Harry?” He wants to shake Harry and slap some sense into him. He wants him to sober. He wants him to say _I love you _and mean it. He wants Harry to _want _to love him. Whether he means it or not in this drunken state, there’s no question that Harry doesn’t want to feel whatever he feels. Draco knows it’s pointless to argue with someone so drunk, but he can’t help himself. “I love _you_, you arsehole! Who is that fair to?”

Draco is wrung out with emotion and ashamed when the tears finally roll down his cheeks. Is it really supposed to hurt this much? Harry looks blurry through his tears, but he sees Harry’s eyes widen and his attention focus for a moment.

“Not fair to you. Not fair to you,” Harry says, and he repeats it as his eyes close and he grows less and less coherent. 

“Fuck you,” Draco says to Harry’s now unconscious figure, “you beautiful, fucking arsehole. Fuck you.” 

Draco feels like he’s sending love into an emotional void, and the pain of it is bewildering after so many years of feeling so little.

Harry looks like he’s out for the night, and it doesn’t seem like he’s in danger of getting sick so Draco tells himself he should go back to his room. But he can’t bring himself to leave Harry like this. He’s angry and he’s devastated, and he’s also in love. So, he kicks off his boots and pulls up the room’s armchair, setting it close enough to the bed that he can put his feet up. He grabs one of the extra pillows off the bed and a blanket, and does his best to settle in. So much for a night in a comfortable bed.

It seems he’s awake forever, but he must eventually fall asleep, and when he wakes, Harry’s shaking him, sending a little buzz down his arm from where they touch. “Draco?”

Draco rouses himself and looks up to find Harry looking dismal, though not especially unwell. “You okay?” he asks.

“Fine,” Harry says. “I’m sorry, Draco. You shouldn’t have stayed.”

Draco blinks the sleep out of his eyes and tries to force down his irritation. “I wasn’t going to leave you in that state.” Harry backs away a couple of steps and sits on the edge of the bed. He looks like he’s been up for a bit. He’s wearing a hotel robe instead of his clothes and his hair is damp. “Did you shower? How the hell are you not hungover?”

“I am, a bit. I honestly didn’t drink that much. I think I might have spelled myself into that state, if you can believe it,” Harry says. 

Draco would believe just about anything of Harry’s magic. “Why?” It’s the same question he asked last night, and he doesn’t expect to get anything like the confession he got then, but maybe he’ll hear something honest.

“I hate being like this, Draco. I guess I wanted to get away from myself for a night.”

Draco swallows. He’s wondered if this trip wasn’t a bad idea for Harry in the end. He wouldn’t be the first person not to take to life on a fishing boat. “Do you want to go home? You can, you know.” 

Harry looks surprised, but then shakes his head. “No, I don’t want that. I want to help with the book.”

The book. Draco has used the book as a way to keep communicating with Harry, but if that’s not what Harry needs, it’s going to be up to him to convince Harry he can leave. “I’ve got enough material to be writing for weeks, Harry. We’ll be back in Helsinki the first week in October. I could come to Scotland and we could pick up then.” He doesn’t want Harry to leave, but it would be easier than continuing on the way they have been.

Harry seems to contemplate that, but then he shakes his head again. “I don’t have anything to go back to.”

Draco assumes he’s going to regret asking this question, but he can’t help it. “Do you have something to stay for?”

Harry’s eyes meet his and he feels Harry’s magic touch him, whisper-soft. “I’ve been trying to do the right thing, Draco. I swear, that’s all I wanted. For the way I am not to hurt you. Or me. It’s no good for me to have these… feelings. I have no place to put them. Helve and Emel have been teaching me to use my magic in a different way. I thought if I could control it, I could stop dragging you close.” 

Every cell in Draco’s body wants to reach out to Harry, but he’s been hurt enough already not to do it. “Do you think you’re ‘dragging me’ into having… feelings for you?” Draco is painfully aware that they’d both used the word ‘love’ last night. 

“You feel it, don’t you? The way my magic reaches out to you?”

“Of course I do. But don’t you think I’ve been reaching back? And don’t you think I have a choice about that?

“I don’t know,” Harry says. “There’s not much of me to reach back to.”

“You keep saying that!” Draco is tired of Harry telling him he’s less than who Draco knows him to be. “You feel that way, but you’re here, Harry. Damnit, be here!” Harry doesn’t react to Draco’s anger, only watches silently from his perch on the bed, his big, gorgeous eyes blinking at Draco. “I’m sorry, Harry. I’m sorry.” 

“No, you’re right,” Harry says. “It’s selfish to disappear in plain sight. I want to try to fix this. To be better. I want us to be friends, at least.”

“We were. I thought,” Draco says. “You stopped talking to me.”

“I know. It was a mistake. I thought I could save us both some pain, but I was miserable and it didn’t change anything, did it?” Harry says. Draco wonders whether Harry remembers what he said last night, if his confession means anything to him at all.

Friendship is so much less than what Draco wants, but the alternative is unbearable. “No, you didn’t change anything. Not for the better, anyway.”

Harry stands and hovers closer, his physical presence stirring something alive in Draco the way it always does. He fiddles with the belt of his robe. “Will you come with me this morning? I want to buy a souvenir.”

Maybe there’s something to Harry’s claim that his magic is dragging Draco in like a tractor beam because all Harry has to do is ask for Draco’s company, and his answer is an immediate and unreserved yes. “I need a shower.”

“Sure, come back when you’re ready.”

Draco rises stiffly out of the chair where he’s spent the night and stretches, Harry close enough that Draco feels his heat. He watches Draco, still some form of indecision on his face, like he’s suspended between two polar choices. And maybe they both are. All or nothing? Draco hopes not, but it feels that way sometimes. 

He forces himself out of the door and down the hall to his own room. Inside, he spares a longing glance for the bed he never got to sleep in, and tries to enjoy the shower while he has it. Having a shower at all aboard the Lunastus is a luxury, but it’s rarely free when he wants it and it spits out the saddest little spray. He’s anxious to get back to Harry, but he forces himself not to rush, washing his hair and lathering up, appreciating the heavy beat of water on his back. He’s hard the way he often is when he has Harry on his mind, and he has so little privacy on the boat that he’s near ready to explode as soon as he takes himself in hand. It’s pointless to push away the memory of Harry inside him when he grunts out his orgasm, a heady and necessary release and only an echo of what he craves.

By the time he’s back in Harry’s room, he feels vaguely refreshed and decides to allow himself a bit of optimism about the day. They have to be back on board by noon, but that leaves them a few hours. “Where are we going?” he asks.

“You’ll see. I have directions from Nora,” Harry says, and he pulls out what looks like a paper cocktail napkin from the pocket of the jeans he’s wearing now. They write a note for Tapio and slip it under his door on their way out, letting him know that Harry is well and they’ll see him back at the boat.

It’s quite early in Aalborg when they hit the pavement, and shops and cafes are just beginning to open. It’s cool for late August and there’s a high morning fog in the air that will burn off later. Draco follows Harry, who follows a miniature map drawn onto the napkin. “Do you have your wand?” Harry asks, as he turns down a street that Draco thinks looks familiar. There’s a neighbourhood in Aalborg much more closely resembling Diagon Alley than anything in Helsinki, accessible through the back of a coffee shop, which seems to be where they’re heading.

“Always,” Draco says, patting the inside pocket of his coat. “You?” 

“It’s on the boat.”

Harry has ceased even to pretend to use his wand, and Draco is relieved that Harry’s not self-conscious about it anymore, though it’s good one of them has a wand in case Harry’s magic invites questions. Draco isn’t certain what he’s learned from Helve and Emel, but he assumes the lessons have helped his control. 

“I’ll show you,” Harry says, as though he’s reading Draco’s mind. “If you’re interested. I need a lot more practice, but I’m starting to understand the way my magic works.”

“I’d like to see it.” 

When they reach the coffee shop Draco remembers from previous visits, they each order a cup of coffee to take away, and then drift towards the staff exit in the back. Once through the back door, they cross a small courtyard to what appears to be a solid cement wall. Draco pulls out his wand and traces a door in the wall, repeats the words he was taught by Akseli years ago, and they step through the door he conjured into a quiet street that looks not terribly unlike the Muggle street that brought them here.

It’s early and shops here are still opening as well. He’s glad they have coffee to warm and wake them, and they sip for a few minutes, watching the morning activity around them. Wizards and witches are dressed casually for the most part, though there are some in robes probably on their way to Danish Ministry-type jobs. The small street they’re on gives way to a maze of a neighbourhood, which includes a larger thoroughfare with a bank and a number of government buildings. Draco could have led them this far, but from here on out, they need Harry’s map to bring them to the shop he has in mind.

“We turn right here,” Harry says.

“Let me see.” Draco is pretty sure the map shows a left, but it could be he’s looking at it upside down.

Harry shows him the map but doesn’t let go, jabbing his finger at the supposed right turn. “Right.”

“That’s a left,” Draco says, wrangling the napkin out of Harry’s hand and turning it so it’s oriented properly.

He allows Harry to grab the map back, amused that he’s being stubbornly wrong. “But we’re here,” Harry says, pointing to the top left corner of the map.

“Actually, we’re here,” Draco says, pointing to their correct location in the bottom right corner of the map.

Harry spins the map in his hand a couple of times and Draco can see him gearing up to argue further when he looks up at the street name above his head, back at the map, and deflates. “Oh. Right. Left, I mean.” 

“No wonder you spent so much of seventh year lost in the woods,” Draco says.

“Ha ha,” Harry deadpans. “I was saving the world, you ingrate.”

Draco laughs, warmed by Harry’s comfort with a conversation he couldn’t have imagined them having a month ago. Or yesterday, for that matter. “Forever indebted,” Draco says, and he’s teasing but he also means it, and it’s such a relief to be able to say so without feeling oppressed by the weight of it. That’s one of the many gifts Harry has given him since the reunion. 

Draco reads the sign on the little corner shop when they find it and arches his eyebrows at Harry. “Troublemaker,” he says.

“Guilty,” Harry says, and the bell on the door jingles as they make their way into The Dragon’s Lair.

When they first set foot inside, it’s quiet and the colourful toy dragons that line the shelves around the cramped room are still. But as soon as Harry has made three steps into the shop, one of the little dragons roars from one side of the room, and another from the opposite side. In a moment, four dragons of varied colours and sizes are flying towards Harry, and he and Draco both have to duck and weave to avoid being singed by their tiny magical fire.

“Oh my,” says the old woman who appears then. She’s short enough that Draco hadn’t seen her behind the counter. “They like you, sir,” she says to Harry in heavily accented English. She doesn’t seem distressed by the fact that her merchandise is misbehaving. Instead she appears delighted. “You’re a special one, aren’t you?”

Draco’s not sure how she knew to speak English, but before he can ask she turns to him and nods. “I can always tell an English wizard by his shoes.” She’s pointing at Harry’s trainers.

“Apologies,” Harry says. “I didn’t mean to disturb them.”

“They’ve been spelled to fly. It’d be a shame if they never got a chance to spread their wings,” she says. “Are you looking for something special?”

Harry asks her to tell him where some of the dragons are from, and Draco peruses the shelves while Harry walks around with the shopkeeper like the pied piper of dragons, more than ten of them now flying in his wake.

It’s never occurred to Draco to buy a souvenir for anyone. He’s been alone for so long. But he’s promised to visit his mother by the end of October, and he realises as he inspects the dramatic detail on each of the miniature dragons that he’s now someone who has people in his life, people he might buy souvenirs for. There are his mother and Pansy. Perhaps he should buy something for Grim and Cate as well, and even Andromeda and Teddy.

He more or less collides with Harry as they both turn the same corner of the shop, and Harry shows him the green dragon with spikes on its back and grey eyes that perches on his finger. “Made in Finland, she says.”

“Hugo will love it,” Draco assures him. “Hermione will be thrilled.”

“I thought maybe you’d deliver it. When you go home?” Harry says, and there’s something in his tone that Draco doesn’t like.

“It’s your gift. You should give it to him,” Draco says, hoping Harry isn’t implying anything else. “You will be seeing them, won’t you?”

Harry doesn’t answer right away. He peers closely at the dragon, its tail twitching and head swaying. “Mmm,” Harry says. “I suppose.”

Draco’s buoyant mood dips at Harry’s noncommittal tone. It’s nothing new. Harry refuses to commit to much of anything beyond his most immediate plans, but Draco hates the reminder that Harry always has one foot out the door. 

“You hold onto it,” Draco says. “I have my own presents to buy.” Because he does, he’s decided, and he’s looking forward to it. 

Harry smiles up at him at that. “Really? We’d better go, then. Who’s on your list?”

____________________

By the time Harry and Draco make it back to the hotel, they have only a few minutes to collect their things and head to the harbour. They run into Nora and Eva on the way out, and Harry shows them the dragon he’s now carrying in his bag thanks to Nora’s directions. Draco in turn is forced to hold up Pansy’s fancy parchment and his mother’s silver necklace with the delicate leaping fish design engraved on it. 

“Reminds me of our fly-fishing rods,” Harry says, and Draco feels a pang of longing for the River Dee and the time he had there with Harry. It’s only been a month, but it feels longer.

Draco gets some serious side-eye from Eetu when he boards the Lunastus with Harry, the two of them still deep in conversation. Eetu won’t force him to explain, but he feels like he needs to convince him that he and Harry can manage a friendship. Maybe he needs to convince himself.

That night, once they’ve pulled out of the harbour and rounded the tip of the peninsula that forms the gateway to the North Atlantic, Harry and Draco find an unoccupied corner of the boat on the aft deck. It’s chilly and they’re both in their matching wool jumpers. Draco casts Lumos and Harry sets up a series of objects—a bowl and a fork he’s pinched from the galley, a T-shirt he’s pinched from Draco, his trainers, several of the books he’s brought from Draco’s flat, and the souvenir dragon—on the deck. He stands as far away as possible, nearly twenty feet from the objects, and demonstrates to Draco how he can draw each to him and then repel each object back to its original spot. His aim is not fantastic when it comes to returning the objects, but Draco can tell the energy he uses to call things to him isn’t anything like the uncontrolled force he used to call the salmon to him that day on the Dee. It makes him wonder if he set all those dragons loose in the shop today on purpose.

“The hard part is attracting and repelling different objects at the same time—sorting, if you like,” Harry says. “But I have an idea, if I could master it.”

He moves everything to the centre of the deck and raises his hands so that all the objects float in the air for a moment, then pushes and pulls at the same time, drawing some of the objects to him while sending others away. He makes it look easy, sorting all of the objects into two piles on opposite sides of the deck without so much as a word spoken. “That’s amazing,” Draco says.

“What if I could sort the fish in the water?” Harry says. “Would Akseli object?”

“He’d object to calling the fish. You know we all would.”

“I don’t have to call the fish because they’re already there when we hit a school of them. What if I could repel the species in the area we don’t want without repelling the ones we do, before we drop the net?”

“Could you do that? Would your magic know the difference?” Draco’s first thought is that Harry could never. It’s one thing to sort a handful of objects. Draco could probably manage that with the right spell. It’s another entirely to sort hundreds of fish he can’t even see at the same time. And even if he could, would Akseli allow it? Perhaps he would. It would only serve to limit the bycatch, and there’d be no Muggles to witness it. It still seems incredibly difficult to accomplish.

“I think I could teach my magic to do it. I’d have to practice.”

Draco is sure of one thing. “Eetu would approve. He might sway his uncle if Akseli had concerns. You should talk to him about it first.” He wonders if others might help, if there’s a spell that might accomplish the same thing. He doesn’t know one, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. “Did Helve and Emel teach you to do that?”

“Not exactly. They can use energy around them to move objects, but they use a singular focus so they can’t sort in quite the same way. They’ve helped me understand my magic in terms of magnetic poles.” 

“You’re a magnet,” Draco says, and as soon as he says it, he marvels at how obvious it is. “You’re a bloody magnet!”

Harry’s responding look in the light of Draco’s Lumos is sheepish. “Basically.” So much of what Harry said to him last night and this morning—his guilt for “dragging” Draco close—makes sense all of a sudden. 

He remembers seeing Harry across the Great Hall and his first impression of him. _Stone cold fox. _And he remembers the way he was drawn to Harry from the day they met, nearly seven years before Harry’s death. He may feel Harry’s pull physically, but there’s a lot more to it than that.

“Well, don’t get all weird about it,” Draco says. “Is that what you’re worried about?”

“I’m worried about a lot of things, as you know,” Harry says. “That’s one of them.”

Draco pushes off the rail of the deck and approaches Harry, waiting until he’s close enough to feel the drawing force around him, and then stands just at the edge of its tickling call. He’s close enough to touch Harry with an outstretched arm, so he does. He reaches out and skims the back of his fingers over Harry’s cheek, spreads his fingers into the hair at Harry’s nape, and strokes Harry’s plush bottom lip with his thumb. There’s no denying the thrum of energy he feels in the touch, or the pull at his gut, but some of that was always there, and some of it is attraction that would exist in any case.

“I wanted to be your friend, Harry, from the moment we met. I hated how little you thought of me. And when I saw you at the reunion, long before you got your magnetic clutches on me, I thought you were the most gorgeous person I’d ever laid eyes on.”

Harry doesn’t step closer, but his magic does begin to wrap around Draco’s hand and slither down his arm, like a vine ensnaring him and tightening its grip.

“I feel it. Of course I do. Merlin, it’s intense,” Draco says. “But I’d be drawn to you without it. I was. I always was,” And then he lets himself take the two steps forward that brings Harry’s chest to his, his beautiful face to Draco’s. It’s reckless and self-destructive, perhaps, but Draco’s resistance is in shreds and he leans down to kiss Harry. 

As soon as their lips meet, Draco feels his world righting itself, like the earth has exhaled a contented sigh around him and the stars above and sea below approve. It’s fantasy, but Draco can’t imagine anything more perfect than Harry’s mouth on his, the scratch of his beard on Draco's, the slick of his tongue and then the heat of his breath in Draco’s ear as Draco leans down to suck the tender flesh of Harry’s neck between his teeth. He’d meant something sweet and comforting in the kiss, but he’s already dizzy with arousal and swaying into Harry.

“Are you sure?” Harry asks him at the same time that he grips Draco’s arse with two hands and hauls him in closer. 

“No,” Draco pants, grinding his hips into Harry, seeking friction in whatever way he can get it. “Don’t care.”

Harry backs him up against the rail and douses Draco’s Lumos, shrouding them in darkness on the moonless night. Draco should care about the possibility of discovery, but right now the whereabouts of his crewmates is his least concern. Instead he’s consumed with the heat of Harry’s hands on him, and then the welcome bite of cold air when Harry unbuttons his jeans and shoves them with his pants down to his thighs. “Shit,” Draco grunts, his cock urgently hard.

Harry goes to his knees and doesn’t waste a moment taking Draco into the wet heat of his mouth. He swallows Draco down so quickly he gags himself. Draco tries to pull back but Harry holds him tight, adjusting to Draco’s length in his throat. The tight suction all but undoes Draco and he has to cast his eyes to the sky to try to gain control. 

Harry finally eases back, letting Draco slide out of his mouth, licking and sucking the head of Draco’s cock, torturing him with the tip of his tongue hard on the vein that runs up the underside, and then taking him back in inch by inch. He urges Draco to thrust with his hands on Draco’s arse, and that’s all it takes to ruin his control. Before he knows it, he's dug a hand into the wild mane of Harry's hair and he’s fucking into Harry’s mouth, each thrust tightening the tense pleasure in his balls and the base of his cock.

He’s almost undone when he feels it, Harry’s magic a blunt pressure at his hole, asking permission. “Gods, yes,” he groans, and the sensation of a thick length pressing its way into his arse is pure pleasure as it opens him and finds its sure way to his prostate, hitting him so hard that Draco spills down Harry’s throat with a broken cry.

Draco is still coming, pleasure throbbing in his groin and tingling down his legs, when he forces himself to open his eyes and watch Harry’s red mouth stretched around his cock as he swallows around Draco. Draco’s knees buckle and he slumps back on the rail, a hand on Harry’s shoulder to keep himself from falling. “Holy shit, Harry.”

He twitches with aftershocks as Harry hungrily licks him clean, and then Harry groans unmistakably, burying his face in Draco’s hip as he convulses with his own pleasure. Harry’s pants are down somehow, his cock out, hard and spurting come as though he’s been inside Draco. It’s possible he has been. Fucking crazy magic Harry’s got.

When Harry stills, Draco eases down onto the deck, his back against the rail, and pulls Harry to his chest. The night air is already cooling his overheated flesh and he struggles to right his clothes, helping Harry to do the same. When they’re settled, he nudges Harry’s chin to bring him close enough to kiss, tasting himself on Harry’s lips. He savours the sweetness of the kiss so soon after Harry’s proved just how filthy that same mouth can be. Harry hums into his mouth and then breaks the kiss, burying his face in Draco’s neck.

“I thought we said something about trying to be friends this morning,” he mutters into Draco’s skin. The vibration of Harry’s voice against him is a tantalising touch that distracts him from Harry’s words for a moment.

He wraps his arms around Harry, tight, knowing full well that no matter how close he holds him, he can’t hold the part of Harry that doesn’t want to be here. Draco doesn’t have an answer to Harry’s unspoken question, _what does this mean? _He’s tried to do the sensible thing, and apparently Harry’s tried his own version as well. If Harry’s magic is magnetised, Draco’s must have iron at its core, because he can’t resist this pull between them, not the physical one or the one tugging at his heart. “I am your friend, Harry,” he says.

Since neither of them seems to know what they’re doing, there’s no point in rehashing the same internal debate. Instead, Draco enjoys the moment of rest and the peace he feels with Harry tucked into his side, nosing at his jaw and behind his ear. 

____________________

By unspoken mutual agreement, they don’t have any more conversations about the wisdom of their friendship, or of carrying on a physical relationship. Draco doesn’t talk about the fact that every day he spends with Harry, immersed in Harry’s past for the book while he watches him move so gently through the world in the present, cements how irrevocably in love he is with the man. Harry may be some kind of electromagnetic force, but he’s also the ocean wave: gentle and soothing yet with fearsome potential.

They manage to work around each other without assaulting their shipmates with lewd displays of their affection, but over the next couple of weeks, they get acquainted with every possible uncomfortable location for having sex, cramming themselves into the most secluded corners, and actual closets, aboard the Lunastus. They’ll put into port in Bergen on their way south from the tip of Norway, towards the end of September, before they make their final run back to Helsinki. Draco spends an inordinate amount of time fantasising about having Harry on a real mattress and in a horizontal position when they do.

Harry has easily convinced Eetu to let him practice sorting fish, and Eetu has convinced Akseli to let Harry test his ability while they move through the North Atlantic towards the Norwegian Sea. He hasn’t been given permission to try it with the trawl net in the water, but Eetu observes from the deck and Harry works at sorting fish species when he has clearance that there are no other vessels remotely in the vicinity and they’re not actively fishing. They trawl for several species in the North Atlantic and Norwegian Sea, including cod and salmon, so the sorting is complicated even more by the need to repel numerous species while not repelling several others. It’s impossible to see what Harry’s doing under the water, so Eetu has him call certain species to the surface and then send them away.

As the weeks march into September, the rain becomes more frequent and the wind stronger, so that many of Harry’s practice sessions require him to brace himself on the rail of the Lunastus as it pitches over choppy waters in the wind. It makes Draco nervous to watch Harry leaning over the rail, concentrating his magic on the depth below so his attention isn’t on his footing. Draco tries to observe as often as he can, especially when the weather is bad. He frequently stands with his hand hovering near the wand in his pocket, ready to free one of the brooms from its storage on the aft deck in case of emergency.

“You are like a mother hen,” Eetu says to him one day. “It is cute.” 

“Shut up.”

At night, after he’s said a private goodnight to Harry, sometimes up on deck and sometimes in the far less accommodating supply closet, he climbs into his bunk and Tapio teases him mercilessly. It wouldn’t bother him except that Tapio, along with most of the rest of the crew, assumes he and Harry are in a more serious relationship than they are. “I will bake your wedding cake, Draco. I will even use butter if you wish. Just tell me when,” is Tapio’s favourite line. It hurts, because Draco wishes that Harry felt half of what their friends believe he does, and wanted from Draco half of what Draco wants so certainly from him.

By the end of the first week in September, they’ve reached the Norwegian Sea, where they’ll fish for two weeks before turning south again. Harry’s sorting abilities begin to be nearly fine-tuned enough to convince Akseli to let him give it a try with the net in the water, and a lot of the crew have started to watch Harry’s practice sessions. Helve and Emel come up to observe Harry occasionally, and even try their hand at Harry’s sorting. Their magic is less discriminating though, as Harry predicted. They can call or repel all the fish in the immediate vicinity of the boat, or none, but not select for species.

To Draco’s surprise, even Tapio takes an interest in Harry’s efforts. He’s a cook, and has never shown much interest in the fishing side of their operation, particularly since he’s also vegan. But the notion that they could spell a selection process interests him in much the same way a complex recipe does. And when he describes it in those terms, Draco’s conviction that there must be a spell to accomplish what Harry is attempting strengthens. He and Tapio begin to set up their own sorting experiments with vegetables and spices and pots and pans in the galley. Their early experiments are largely disastrous, and Akseli nearly forbids them to try further when dinner one night is inedible for the amount of paprika they unintentionally dump on the evening’s salmon. 

“It might not have been so bad on chicken,” Harry offers, poking at the grotesque concoction.

Akseli spits out his mouthful of salmon. “On chicken, he says!”

That same night, Draco takes a shift on the bridge. Rain batters the boat but the wind is calm and piloting takes only sporadic attention. They’ve heard from other vessels in the area that there’s a massive storm to the west, and Draco is hoping they can skirt the edge of it.

Harry appears at the door early in Draco’s shift, greeting him with the kind of smile that’s become more common the last couple of weeks.

“I don’t want to hear it,” Draco says, even though he enjoys Harry’s teasing. It’s still so new, their friendship and the fact that they’ve healed the past enough to tease at all.

“I thought Akseli was going to throw Tapio overboard.”

“There’s a reason I volunteered to take the night shift on the bridge,” Draco says, spinning in his chair and pulling Harry between his legs.

Harry digs his fingers into Draco’s hair, loosening it from the knot at his neck, and kisses him, a lingering kiss that tastes of spice. It’s a ‘hello’ kiss and an ‘I haven’t kissed you for twelve hours’ kiss. It’s the kind of kiss Draco dangerously allows himself to imagine carries a future with it sometimes. 

“Mmm, paprika,” Draco says, and laughs. “It tastes better on you than the fish.”

“I still think it would have worked on chicken,” Harry says, and drops another sloppy kiss onto the corner of Draco’s mouth. 

Draco can’t help but nurture the smallest hope that Harry is happier than he was. He smiles more, for one thing. More importantly, though, the way he’s thrown himself into learning a new skill, and the fact that he’s so determined to help Akseli’s crew accomplish something that matters to many of them—to Eetu most of all—suggests he’s invested in the present in a way Draco doesn’t think he has been for years. He’s made friends on the Lunastus. Draco can’t believe those friendships haven’t touched Harry. Or it may simply be that he can’t bear to think that what’s growing between them isn’t enough to hold Harry here.

“I’d like to see you sort paprika out of a pile of cumin and turmeric without mishap,” Draco says, even though he’s fairly certain Harry could do it with no problem. 

“Piece of cake. At least I know the difference between those spices. I still can’t tell the difference between pollack and mackerel.” 

“They look nothing alike.” They really don’t, but it probably took Draco years to learn to identify all the species of fish they pull up in their nets.

“Says you. My magic disagrees,” Harry says. “Luckily we’re not fishing for either right now, so Akseli agreed to let me do my worst—er, try my best. The next time we drop the net.”

Harry’s excitement is contagious and almost eclipses the constant worry Draco has about Harry perched precariously on the rail of the boat with a storm approaching. Draco will be close by, even if they hit their next school at six this morning when he’s meant to get some sleep. He pulls Harry into an embrace, tucking his chin over Harry’s shoulder. “That’s great, Harry. You’re a wonder.”

Harry nips at his ear and grunts. “We’ll see. It feels good to think I could do something worthwhile with my magic. Other than get you off.”

Harry’s magic grasps at him when he says that and something deep inside Draco grasps back. “Don’t underestimate the importance of getting me off.”

____________________

Harry leaves him on the bridge shortly after midnight, and Draco is relieved by Eetu at six in the morning. There’s been no call to drop the net, so Draco climbs into his bunk to get some rest before lunch. He’s awakened from a deep sleep by Tapio, what seems like only minutes later.

“Sorry to wake you. They dropped the net. I thought you’d want to see.”

It takes Draco a moment to orient himself, but Tapio’s words sink in and he sits up so fast he nearly brains himself on the ceiling. “What time is it?”

“Nearly ten.”

“Thanks,” Draco says, swinging down from the bunk and rummaging for a pair of jeans and a shirt.

“The temperature dropped. It’s frigid,” Tapio says, and then leaves him to dress.

Draco doesn’t want to miss a moment of Harry’s first sorting run, but if Tapio says it’s cold, it must be, because he almost never notices the weather. Draco’s carrying long johns and a scarf somewhere deep in his bottomless bag, and in his rush, he begins dumping clothes out onto the bottom bunk, looking for the warmer items. 

Something too hard to be clothing thumps on the bed, and Draco sees a flash of familiar green amid his growing pile of pants and socks. He fishes the little dragon out of his pile, confused at first. It’s the toy Harry bought for Hugo in Aalborg, inert but unmistakable in its delicate detail, Slytherin green body and grey eyes a little like Draco’s staring up at him. At first he’s tickled by the memory of Harry in the shop with a parade of dragons flying around him. But the little bubble of happiness pops when he realises that Harry must have put the dragon in his bag. It’s not a present for Draco, he’s sure of that. He’s meant to deliver it to Hugo. On Harry’s behalf. In Harry’s absence.

Draco stuffs the dragon back in his bag, abandons the search for warmer clothes, and pulls on the first things he can get his hands on, gnawing worry threatening to eat a hole through his empty stomach. He almost runs Valde down on the stairs and doesn’t stop to answer when Valde calls after him to ask what’s the rush. 

The cold is raw on his face the moment he’s above board, but he’s too flushed from sleep and adrenalin to be bothered. The wind is high but there’s a break in the rain. At least it’s dry. There are black storm clouds in the distance, but it should be dry long enough to haul in the net if they dropped it a while ago. 

When he reaches the aft deck, Helve and Emel are right at Harry’s side, braced against the rail, and Akseli is standing with his arms crossed and an inscrutable expression on his face, unfazed by the heave and pitch of the boat. Nora is there, too, and he can hear Eetu’s voice down by the trawl doors, so Eva must be on the bridge. Two other crew members wait for the net to be hauled in, prepared to hand-sort any bycatch Harry’s magic doesn’t manage to repel. A minute later, Valde appears, clearly curious about the excitement on deck.

Harry has his feet on the bottom rung of the rail and his arms outstretched. The wind is in his long hair and his eyes are closed. As worried as Draco is, the sight of him is still breathtaking. He’s concentrating too hard to smile, but Draco could swear he looks like he’s enjoying himself.

Draco forces himself to stuff away his panic. He desperately does not want to believe the dragon in his bag means what his worst fears tell him it means. Not now. Not after the last few weeks.

It’s all he can do to restrain himself from dragging Harry down off the rail, but he watches with the others, tense and ready to act if the boat should send Harry overboard. They must have dropped the net long before he woke, because the surprised relief he feels when Eetu calls up a short time later and they begin to crank the net out of the water and up onto the deck is so intense that he’s lightheaded with it.

Draco goes to Harry as the net is hauled up and all hands dive in to begin the rushed search for living bycatch. He’s not technically on duty, so he doesn’t bother to help. Instead he waits until Harry is safely on deck and then catches him in a quick embrace. He kisses Harry’s temple and squeezes, reassuring himself that Harry is with him and out of danger. Perhaps never in danger, he thinks. “Good job,” he says. 

Harry pulls back with a wry look on his face. “Don’t speak too soon. Let’s take a look.”

Eetu appears from below then, and Harry and Draco join Nora and the other wizards to take a look at the catch. Even with all the many hands digging through the fish in the net, Draco can see almost immediately that what they’ve caught is cod. Lots of cod. And only cod. Eetu is laughing as he plunges gloved hands into the net, sifting through the mostly dead fish in search of anything that doesn’t belong. Akseli doesn’t sort, but he watches his nephew and at a quick glance, Draco would say that even Akseli isn’t immune to Eetu’s enthusiasm. “You did it, Harry!” Eetu calls without taking his eyes off the catch. “You did it!”

Harry’s smile is bashful but genuine, and Draco decides to let the others do the work of preparing the cod for the freezers, keeping an arm around Harry and relishing the way the electric connection between them warms him from the inside out. He’ll confront Harry about the dragon later. Right now he wants to soak up Harry’s obvious contentment and Eetu’s excitement.

“Go get warm,” Akseli tells them, after they’ve stood there for nearly twenty minutes watching the others work. The rain has started again and the wind is picking up. “That storm is going to be a bitch.”

Draco has been so focused on Harry and the cod that he hasn’t noticed how much closer the threatening sky has grown. Valde looks up from the net at the clouds and Draco recognises a gleam of excitement in his eyes, almost the same as Eetu’s as he examines the fish. It reminds Draco that the boy is the same age he and Harry were when Voldemort set them against each other in a war. He’s glad that all Valde has to worry about are some storm clouds. “A big one!” Valde says, and Akseli rolls his eyes.

Harry follows Draco up to the bridge to check on Eva, who tells them she’s heard two distress calls from non-magical vessels just to the west. “One of them reported a whirlpool. They were struck by lightning and had some injuries, but they made it out. They’re headed to Tromsø now.”

“What about the other boat?” Draco asks.

“No word.”

“Will we head to shore?” Harry doesn’t seem concerned, but Draco doesn’t blame him for asking. Harry’s gotten accustomed to the typical September weather, but a maelstrom is a different animal, and if the storm has a lot of electricity, they’ll want to steer as wide of it as they can.

“Unlikely,” Eva says. “I’ll have to see what Akseli wants to do, but it’s moving east faster than we can. I think we’ll try to get north of it before it barrels over us.”

They leave Eva and check the brooms, which are stored in wood crates fastened at the stern of the boat. And then they go below deck and join the others for lunch. There’s not much to do but wait, and Harry is still vibrating with energy.

Tapio pulls Harry into a slapping hug when Draco tells him of Harry’s success, and treats them both to a rich salmon soup. It’s more than an hour later when Eetu, Helve, Emel, Nora, and Valde appear for lunch, wet from the rain but all in good spirits. Valde is full of questions for Harry about the species he’d had to repel to give them a clean catch. The mood is buoyant, despite the storm bearing down on them and the way the boat rocks and rolls.

It’s barely one in the afternoon when Eetu breaks out a bottle of Finnish lakka to celebrate. He isn’t a big drinker, and when he drinks it’s usually vodka, but the cloudberry liqueur is something special that’s he’s clearly been saving for the right occasion. Draco is exhausted after the adrenalin high he’s been on, and from lack of sleep, so a glass of lakka is all it takes for his eyelids to begin to droop. “Why don’t you lie down?” Harry says. “You can’t have slept more than a few hours.”

The boat has been caught by more than the edge of the storm by now, and they list from side to side as the Lunastus climbs steep waves and then plunges over them. It takes more than this to capsize a boat, but it’ll be dangerous to be on deck and it’s not a bad idea for Draco to be better rested in case Akseli and Eva need some help on the bridge later on.

“I wish you could lie down with me,” Draco says. “I’d toss my wand in the sea for a double bed right now.”

“Blasphemy,” Harry says. “That wand saved my life. Hold onto it, please.”

Draco is struck then, as he is occasionally, by how remarkable it is that they are who they’ve become, given who they were, and how unlikely it is they find themselves here, now, after so much time. Sometimes it feels like an impossible twist of fate, and other times it feels like someone with the right kind of Sight might have foreseen it the day they met. “I’ll hold onto the wand. Not that you need it.” He yawns widely. “Okay. Wake me if Akseli needs help. Don’t go upstairs in the storm.”

Harry smirks and kisses him on the nose, pushing him in the direction of his bunk. “I’ll keep myself busy in the galley.”

He doesn’t bother stripping. He does pick up the clothes he left strewn on Tapio’s bunk to shove them back in his bag. He’s reminded of the dragon in his possession and he experiences a slight pang of dread at the thought, but he pushes it away. Harry is fine. He’s here and he’s done something wonderful with his magic today. He’ll be waiting for Draco when he wakes up.

Draco’s slept through heavy storms before. He knows how to position himself on the bunk so that he doesn’t roll badly with the boat. There’s a small guardrail he pulls up to keep from rolling off, and he curls himself tight. He’s asleep within minutes.

____________________

It’s the shouting that wakes him. A loud crack, which might have been a dream, or might have precipitated the voices raised in alarm around him. He has no idea how long he’s been asleep. It doesn’t feel long, but it’s darker than it was when he climbed into his bunk, and the boat is almost vertical on its side, climbing what must be an enormous wave. He struggles to free himself from the bunk, and follows the shouting to find out what’s happened.

A crowd stands at the bottom of the stairs, and the heavy door to the deck is swinging wildly on its hinges. “Who’s up there?”

“Valde went up to bring food to Akseli, and it sounds like we were struck by lightning,” Eetu says. He lays a restraining hand on Draco’s shoulder and something in it tells him precisely what Eetu is going to say next.

“Harry?”

“Ran up after him.”

Draco pulls away from Eetu and gets up two steps when the boat is thrown nearly on its side again and he’s hurled into the wall. Eetu tries to grab him, but Draco manages to pull himself off the wall and continue climbing the stairs. “Draco, it’s too dangerous!”

Valde is a child, and Harry has no idea what to expect from seas like this, so danger or not, he’s going up. He’s not remotely dressed, but he has his wand and pulls it out as he muscles his way up the stairs and out into the driving wind and rain. He spells himself warm and clears a small dry space around him so he can see through the storm. It’s not night, but it might as well be. And the moment he reaches the top of the stairs, he hears a shout and a splash from the aft deck, and his heart drops to the floor. “No, Harry!”

Akseli is there, leaning over the rail of the aft deck, and Eva is with him, dousing flames that dance in the rain around the crates that hold the brooms with her wand. “Where are they?” Draco shouts.

“They went in! Valde was thrown overboard when the lightning struck. Harry came up and jumped after him as soon as I told him what happened!” Akseli is yelling over the storm, and Draco hears the tortured distress in his voice, but it’s nothing compared to the horror he feels. “I tried to stop him, Draco!”

“Harry!” Draco calls. He leans over the rail and scans the heaving waves around them until he sees a head bobbing, and then another. “There they are! They’ll freeze!” 

“I cast a warming spell after both of them,” Akseli says, holding up his wand. “It’ll hold. But some of the brooms went into the sea and the rest are burning.”

Draco’s mind blanks. All he can think is that he has to get to Valde and Harry. Harry! There’s nothing he can do, but he can’t stand there and watch them drown. Before Akseli can stop him, he lifts himself over the rail and jumps, plunging into the violent sea thirty feet below, calling Harry’s name as he goes. If not for the waves, he might plunge so deep that he’d never come up, but the water recedes under him at precisely the right moment and he breaches the surface in time to make out Harry and Valde in the distance. It looks like Harry has an unconscious Valde in his arms, and they’re being pulled further out by some force stronger than any of them. 

He swims as hard as he can in their direction, and from behind him he hears Akseli shout above the wind, “Maelstrom! Maelstrom!”

Draco doesn’t stop swimming until he reaches Harry, but the minute he has his hands on him, he feels the sucking force pulling them. The Lunastus is coming in their direction, too. And over Harry’s shoulder is the most terrifying sight Draco’s ever laid eyes on. A giant typhoon dug into the sea, like a monster waiting to swallow them. They’re so near its edge that going down is inevitable.

“Go back! Go back!” Harry yells to him, and all Draco can think is that he’d rather die than leave Harry. “Apparate!”

“Harry! Please! Come with me!” Harry won’t Apparate with Valde unconscious. Draco is desperate to drag Harry and Valde back towards the boat, but he’s not sure the Lunastus isn’t doomed as well. He has a hand on Harry, but his grip slips and a wave crashes over his head. He’s submerged for long seconds and coughing up water when he finds air again. 

And that’s when he sees the impossible. Harry has an arm out of the water and is no longer clutching Valde. Even as the whirlpool sucks Harry away from Draco, he has lifted Valde into the air and is sending him back in the direction of the boat the way he repelled the fish and the objects on deck weeks ago. Only it’s Valde, and he’s sailing through the air towards the Lunastus.

Draco tries to reach Harry then, to beg him to use his magic to get himself free. “Harry!”

Harry’s concentration is so fierce that he doesn’t respond, but he sees Draco coming towards him. Just as Valde is dropped onto the deck of the Lunastus, Draco feels his body first drawn in Harry’s direction in that familiar way it always is, his iron to Harry’s magnet, and then as though the magnet has been flipped, he is repelled. Before he can do anything about it, he too is out of the water and sailing towards the deck of the boat. Away from Harry, as Harry gets closer and closer to the inescapable edge of the maelstrom. “No! Harry!” he yells, reaching out to Harry at the same time that he’s pushed further and further away.

He crashes onto the deck and Akseli is over him in an instant, helping him up. His warming charm kept him alive in the water, but he’s feeling the cold and beginning to shiver. On his feet, he whirls around and heaves himself back to the rail of the boat, just as he sees Harry, arms over his head as though he’s pushing with all the force in the world in the direction of the Lunastus. Pushing them away from the grasp of the whirlpool, at the same time that it pulls Harry down.

The boat is moving faster now, away from Harry, away from its doom. Draco roars Harry’s name into the howling wind, a cry in the face of death, as he watches Harry’s head disappear and the whirlpool pull him under. Draco’s legs give out, and he crumples onto the deck as his world goes black.


	14. Chapter 14

There’s a moment just before Harry’s body is sucked into the mouth of the maelstrom, when his strength has all but given up on him, deathly cold water threatening to penetrate the warming spell cast over him, that time stops and Harry sees the door that’s been opened to him. It’s the door he’s looked to find for fifteen years. On the other side is light. On the other side is peace. On the other side are his parents, whom he longs to know; his mentor, whom he hopes will explain; his godfather, to whom he simply wants to give a hug. Mad Eye, Lupin, Tonks, and Fred. Even Snape. There are people who gave their lives for him through that door, and he only has to let go, stop fighting for one fraction of a second, and he’ll pass through. He’ll pass through and there’ll be no coming back.

And in that frozen moment a voice cuts through the roar of the storm.

“Harry!”

Draco is safe, and his voice carrying Harry’s name through the dark is a grief-stricken wail. Draco, who has awakened him, who has taught him to be curious again, who is living proof that change is possible, and who has shown him that his own dead heart has life left in it. Because he loves Draco, and he’s put him unfairly on one side of an equation with everything he’s lost on the other. Draco lost, too, and chose to move forward, while Harry has been looking back over his shoulder as though he could go back. In this frozen moment, it strikes him clearly for the first time that there is no going back. He isn’t the same person he was the last time he died. He has a home in Scotland, a godson to look after, and friendships that have endured Harry’s every attempt to dampen them.

And he’s in love. Brightly, deeply, passionately in love with Draco Malfoy, who is calling to him from the boat that will escape from this maelstrom whether Harry makes it or not.

He drained almost the last of his energy to return Valde and then Draco to the boat, and then repel the boat from the whirlpool’s deadly grasp. Repelling Draco turned out to be more difficult than anything he’s tried yet, turning his magnet away from the person it most dearly wants to draw near. He’d almost slipped and dragged Draco into the maelstrom with him, and if he had, he’d have had Draco’s death on his hands as well as his own. But now he has one chance to save himself, and time won’t hold any longer. 

He summons the energy of the sea and the wind and the electricity in the air, pulling them to him to ready himself for the fight of his life. When he can’t contain the moment any longer, time resumes, and in an instant the great force of the whirlpool has him in its thrall. He goes under so quickly that he barely has time to register his own doom, water entering his gasping mouth, ice freezing his lungs and his limbs, and the unfathomable depth of the sea swallowing him whole. There is only one thought left as he drowns, and it is Draco waiting for him, looking for him, mourning for him from the stern of the Lunastus.

The thought of Draco is a hook, as it has been as long as he can remember. He’s too weak to Apparate and too unsure of his target. But he gathers every ounce of magical energy he’s pulled into himself and concentrates on that thought to drag himself up, up, up, out from the depths, to break the surface and finally to rise above the ocean as though his magic knows there is only one direction, and that is towards Draco. Through the wind and the rain, coughing up water and weakened from the cold, Harry sees one of the wayward brooms speeding towards him, and knows he has called it. It’s there because he needs it, and yet he’s barely able to grab hold of it as it flies directly at him, barely able to swing a leg over and cling for his life as it spins around and heads away from the maelstrom in the direction of the Lunastus.

Time is against him now. He can’t stop it, and every minute, every second that he flies through the icy air with his last bit of strength depleted threatens to be his last. If he can hold on long enough to reach the boat, he’ll make it, but the boat will be speeding towards Norway, and Harry’s broom is veering and wobbling, toppled by wind and unguided by him as he drifts in and out of consciousness. The world disappears, and then for a moment he’s aware again of pain and exhaustion, concentrating on nothing but the grip of wood in his numbing hands. He tries to warm himself, to direct the broom, but he has nothing left. For the first time in years, he wishes for his wand, which is tucked away in his bag and sailing away with Draco and the crew of the Lunastus. Draco, Draco, Draco. His heart aches with the rest of him at the thought of losing Draco now, losing him before Harry has had a chance to tell him that he’s enough. That his love is so much more than enough. And Harry could swear the broom straightens its course as he loses consciousness with Draco his last thought. 

____________________

Harry remembers death as a peaceful place. There is nothing peaceful about his crashing entry this time, which is his first clue that he is perhaps not dead. The second is his name shouted in a voice that sounds a lot like Eetu’s. The third is the searing pain of collision between his body and what feels like the solid steel deck of a boat.

“Harry! It is Harry! Someone get Draco!” A large paw of a hand lands on Harry’s face and pries one of his eyes open. “Can you hear me?”

Harry can, miraculously, and he can also see Eetu peering at him in what looks like moonlight, but he can’t speak and can only hold onto one thought. It is that he’s made it back to Draco. He fights to hang onto consciousness for that reason only, and it takes minutes, but he hears several pairs of heavy footsteps on the metal staircase finally, and a moment later Draco is on his knees, weeping over Harry. “Oh Harry, oh gods.” He lifts Harry by the shoulders and hugs him tight, his voice cracked as though he’s been shouting for hours. “You made it. You made it.”

Harry barely has the strength to return Draco’s embrace, but he clings to him, his legs stretched out on the deck and the rest of him cradled in Draco’s arms. He’s still too weak to speak, but he’s more alive than he ever remembers being and can’t believe how lucky he is to have a future. A future with the man whose tears are mingling with the salt on his skin. He musters the strength to say Draco’s name, a whisper in his ear.

“Please don’t leave, Harry,” Draco says, trembling with Harry in his arms.

“Never.”

____________________ 

Harry is wrapped in a wool blanket once he’s able to stand and make his way below deck. Valde is recovering as well, from the trauma of the cold, the water he swallowed, and the blow from one of the brooms that knocked him off the deck when lightning struck and the boat tipped sideways. Both Nora and Emel are strong healers, and they’ve managed to save Valde from any lasting damage. They’d also managed to subdue Draco, who otherwise might have thrown himself overboard when he believed Harry was dead, according to Eetu. Harry hopes that’s hyperbole, because he can’t bear the thought of Draco doing anything to harm himself.

Draco doesn’t let Harry get even an arm’s length away as they sail through the fjords towards the northern Norwegian city of Tromsø. He wouldn’t let Harry out of bed either if it weren’t for Helve, Emel, and Eetu insisting that they come up on deck. Draco helps Harry up the stairs on his weak legs, burrito-wrapped in his wool blanket. As soon as they open the door to the outside, they see it. The clouds have cleared, the storm having blown to the northeast. Above them, the sky is awash in a mystical green light. It sways and undulates as though they’re watching someone paint an eerie green onto a black canvas, and the broad strokes careen across the galaxies overhead. It’s unlike any magic Harry’s ever seen. Harry can’t help but think it’s a Slytherin wet dream. Draco stares in wonder, his magic calling to Harry and Harry letting his own reach out and hold fast.

Akseli gives them his cabin, and Harry sleeps fitfully, awakened by nightmares of a sea monster devouring him, Valde lost, Draco repelled by his magic and unreachable across a chasm of his own creation. Each time he wakes, Draco is there, watching over him, soothing him, and heating him from the inside out when he shivers. Even spent, Harry’s magic pulls Draco to him. When he spikes a fever the next morning, he can feel Draco’s magic like melted iron pouring through his veins. And when the fever breaks later in the day and Draco tells him it was a delusion, he clings to the thought that they are nevertheless inseparable.

He sleeps deeply, finally, and this time when he wakes, his head is clearer and the nightmares a distant memory. Draco is there, propped up in a sitting position with a lap desk, a small stack of parchment, and a quill. He’s writing, and doesn’t notice that Harry’s awake. Harry hasn’t asked to see any of what Draco’s written since he read the introduction to his biography back in Scotland. He’s curious, but not enough to ask Draco to share it before he’s ready. 

When Harry shifts onto his side, he draws Draco’s attention. He could stare into those grey eyes forever, but he notices for the first time how tired Draco looks. He wants to ask Draco if he’s okay, but he can’t find his voice when he first tries to speak. What comes out is a gravelly rasp, and there’s a rattle in his chest.

“Shh,” Draco says, and leaps out of bed to get help. He returns minutes later with Emel, who sits with Harry and lays hands on his chest, drying his lungs and soothing his battered throat. Draco disappears again, and this time returns with a potion for Harry to drink. Harry submits to all of this without complaint. He wants to be well and he trusts them to help him. 

The potion makes him drowsy again, but before he falls asleep, he grasps Draco’s hand and pulls him down so that they’re lying next to each other on their sides. “Please rest,” he says. “You need rest, too.”

Harry sleeps a dreamless sleep then, and this time when he wakes, his chest is clear and his throat no longer hurts. He’s in the cocoon of Draco’s embrace, Draco’s chest rising and falling behind him. There’s light in the room through the porthole, and Harry tries to determine what time it is, what day it is. He gives up when he realises he’s completely lost track.

They’re on the boat, but it feels like they’re docked, rocking slightly but not moving. Tromsø’s Northern Lights could have been a dream, but Harry’s fairly certain he saw them the night of the storm. They’re in Lapland, still far from Helve and Emel’s people, who live in an area in northern Finland, closer to the Russian border than the Norwegian, but they share a culture with the Sámi people of Tromsø. Harry wouldn’t mind spending some time here. 

And that’s when it hits him that he has a future to plan. For the first time in fifteen years, the thought of his life stretching out in front of him doesn’t fill him with dread. Instead, he feels an edgy excitement about it, a bit of panic at how overwhelming the possibilities are, but also gratitude simmering underneath. Overcome by an urgent need to know what happens next, Harry rolls over and jostles Draco awake.

“Draco, are you up?” He clearly isn’t, but Harry has to talk to him.

Draco jolts awake and sits up, a wild look of fear in his eyes. “Are you okay, Harry?” 

“I didn’t mean to scare you.” Gods, Harry is a mess. He doesn’t want to do anything to unsettle Draco. But he has so many questions. “Are you tired? Can we talk?” Draco went into that water as well, and though he doesn’t seem physically hurt, he’s weary and stressed.

Draco scrubs his face and nods. He collects himself for a moment, then reaches out to pull Harry to his chest, dropping a kiss on Harry’s head, another at his temple, another on his nose. He sighs deeply, pulling his long hair back from his face, and lets Harry go. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Do you have money?” As soon as the question is out and he sees the surprise on Draco’s face, he realises he should have thought that through before he blurted it. His mind is running down rabbit trails so fast he can’t organise the questions clamouring to be answered.

“Um, no. Not more than I earn, if that’s what you mean.” Draco says, obviously uncomfortable but answering truthfully nonetheless.

“That was rude,” Harry says. “I’m trying to understand whether you _need _to work. I want to know what comes next, Draco. If we stay in Finland and work the trawlers for the rest of our lives, which,” Harry wants to make clear, “I will absolutely do if that’s what you want.”

Draco’s eyelids flutter as though he’s trying to process Harry’s declaration and its meaning. Harry is about to go on, but Draco holds up a hand to stop him.

It takes him a minute, but finally he says, “I want three things, Harry Potter. I want to earn my living honestly. I want time to fish. And I want to spend the rest of my life with you. The how and where don’t matter to me in the least. Did you say ‘we’?”

Harry swallows around the bubble of joy swelling in his chest. He has no idea what he wants out of life, except— “The last thing. We, Draco. You and me. Spending our lives together. I want that too.” But he has so much he needs to work through. “I don’t know what else I want. I don’t have a list. I don’t have a plan.”

Draco smiles and takes his hand, the connection between them like the completion of a circuit, lighting him up the way it always does. “Since my list is fairly short and we agree on the most important part, we can make the rest up together. There’s no rush. All we have to do is decide what we want to do today.”

“We’re still in Tromsø?” 

Draco nods. “Akseli and Eetu are repairing the damage from the lightning strike. And they wanted to wait for you and Valde to be well enough to decide if you’d like to continue on the voyage or leave the boat from here.”

“Valde will stay,” Harry says, anxious to see him and know that he’s alright.

“He will,” Draco agrees.

“I will too,” Harry says, and Draco squeezes his hand. “Will you come to Scotland with me? After?”

“Try and stop me.”

____________________ 

They begin to get visitors as the day wears on. Tapio brings them an enormous meal that neither of them has the appetite for, but it gives them an excuse to drink a pot of tea and talk with a few of their friends. Nora, Eva, Helve, Emel, and eventually even Valde come by the cabin. Harry is grateful that instead of rehashing the storm, they tell him about what they’ve seen in Tromsø. It turns out to be their second full day here, and Helve, Emel, and Tapio took Valde on a reindeer carriage ride yesterday. It’s a relief to see that Valde’s irrepressible spirit doesn’t appear to have been dampened by the accident.

Later, Akseli comes and sits on the edge of the bed and quizzes Harry to be certain he’s recovering. “Draco told me you wouldn’t like it if I made a fuss, but you did more than save Valde and Draco. You saved the Lunastus and her entire crew from going down in that maelstrom as surely as I live. I won’t hold a parade. I won’t say another word about it. But you must accept my thanks, Harry.” 

Harry is humbled. Akseli’s promise not to mention it again goes a long way towards easing any discomfort he might feel for the remainder of the trip, and after he’s left, Harry is ready to get up and see the rest of the crew. Draco fetches some of his clothes, and then leaves him alone to dress.

Eetu knocks just as he’s pulling up his socks.

“I think I have lost my bunkmate,” he says, when Harry greets him at the door.

“You haven’t got rid of me yet,” Harry says, letting Eetu into the cabin. With no doors on the bunks, it’s probably safest if he and Draco remain where they are when they return Akseli’s cabin to him, with a little space between them. They’ll have plenty of time once they return to Helsinki.

“You will leave us, though, when this trip is over. We need a spell to sort the fish when you are gone.”

“I think we’ll find one,” Harry says, and he decides that he’ll spend the rest of his time aboard working with Eetu, Draco, and anyone else who wants to help devise a spell to repel the bycatch. 

“I am happy for you.” Eetu’s big blue eyes fix on Harry, and he has a feeling, not for the first time, that Eetu sees more than what’s merely in front of him. “I am happy you finally decided what to do about Draco.”

“Me too. There was probably only ever one choice.”

“Even when there is only one choice,” Eetu says, “you still have to make it.”

____________________

That night, Harry stands on the deck of the Lunastus while Draco and Eetu unmoor the boat and Akseli motors them away from the dock, beginning their long journey back to Helsinki. They’re barely out of the harbour when Harry spots something moving through the air, difficult to make out against the black of a cloudy night sky, but familiar as it approaches. It’s Draco’s owl, Severa, her feathers gleaming under the boat’s light when she lands on Harry’s outstretched arm. She’s carrying two letters, and she relinquishes the one addressed to him. A moment later, the ropes secured, Draco presses up against his back and retrieves his own letter from Severa’s talons.

Draco strokes her head and wraps an arm around Harry. “I guess it’s time to write to Mother.” 

“I owe Ron and Hermione a letter as well, it seems.” 

“What will you tell them?” Draco asks. Draco’s tone is cautious, and Harry can’t blame him for that. Despite what he’s told Draco today, it’ll likely take time for him to trust that Harry is serious when he says he plans to stay. It isn’t that his life has changed overnight. He’s been in transition since the night of the reunion. But the clarity he needed to hold tight to what he has was sudden, and he’s hurt Draco in the meantime.

“I’m going to tell them that I’m coming home. That I can’t wait to see them,” Harry says. “I’m going to tell them I’m happy.”

Draco doesn’t smile at that. Instead he coaxes Severa off Harry’s arm and onto the rail so he can wrap Harry tighter. The owl ruffles her feathers and then hunkers down against the wind from the moving boat. She’ll likely sleep for a couple of days, which will give them time to write their letters.

“You didn’t plan to go home,” Draco says. And Harry remembers slipping the little green dragon into the bottom of Draco’s bag shortly after they left Aalborg. It was a shitty thing to do.

“I had no plan, Draco.” Harry wants to be able to explain this but isn’t sure he has the words. Draco freed him from the responsibility of writing his book. He shook him out of the zombie-like existence he’d been living before. And he’d given him the help and the tools he needed to understand his magic. After fifteen years of searching for a way back to Dumbledore and King’s Cross Station, and everything that waited for him there, it had felt at times like he was tying up loose ends. “I thought I might not go back. Not because I planned to jump overboard. Nothing like that. It just felt… possible. Possible that a different door was opening.” The misery on Draco’s face is gut-wrenching, and Harry leans up to kiss him on his bearded cheek. “I was right, in a way. A different door did open. But it’s you.”

Draco regards him seriously and inhales deeply, exhales. “You need to buy something for Rose,” he says, and Harry sags with relief in Draco’s arms. He’s not sure what he’s done to earn Draco’s trust and understanding, but he’ll work to deserve it as long as he lives.

____________________

_31 October, 2013_

Festive students surrounded by faculty in ghoulish Samhain masks around a bonfire make a terrific sight on the edge of the Quidditch practice pitch, but Hogwarts’ visiting Professor of Celtic Magic, Ciaran Glas, seems to only have eyes for Narcissa Malfoy, who’s radiant in the light of the fire. Most amusing to Harry is the fact that Draco is hovering around his mother as though he can ward off her suitor with his persistent presence. Harry isn’t going to break it to him that Narcissa seems as taken with Professor Glas as he is with her. And if he had to guess, they’ve spent considerable time together already. He’ll let Narcissa explain that to Draco on her own time, though.

For now, what Harry really wants is to get Draco away from the crowd. He’s enjoyed being back at Hogwarts again after the reunion. He spent the day with Teddy and some of his friends, and he’s finally had a chance to catch up with Hagrid. But he’s gotten used to having Draco to himself after weeks at his cabin, and the heat of the fire has inflamed his own internal heat. He’s bloody horny, and Draco has been too busy for the last couple of days to do anything about it. 

He makes his way around the fire and plants himself at Draco’s side until his attention turns from his mother. His hair is pulled back and he's clean shaven. They both are now that they're back on land. He misses his seafaring Viking, but Draco will always be his own personal Norse God. “Can we get some air?” Harry asks. Draco has a mug of ale and Harry decides to make it his mission to see Draco choke on it. He’ll have to try harder though.

“We’re outside,” Draco says, sipping his drink. “And you’ve tried that line before.”

Harry bats his eyelashes. “If I recall, it was highly successful.”

“If I recall, you wanted to go fishing,” Draco says.

“I don’t want to go fishing now. But I’d like you to show me your rod,” Harry says. And that does it. Draco chokes on his ale and Harry has to smack him on the back a few times before he can breathe properly. No one is paying attention to them, but Harry would dearly like to get Draco away from the fire before they make a scene. 

“You’re a menace,” Draco says, when he finally has his voice back.

“I try to be direct, Draco.” And he does, for the most part. It served him well in the beginning. It got Draco to fuck him, certainly. It’s taken him a while to learn how to ask for other things, but he’s working on it.

Draco’s smile is the brightest thing in Harry’s life and he turns it on Harry now. “What are you directly on about now?”

“I need you to walk me down to the lake,” he says, because it’s been on his mind since they set foot on the Hogwarts grounds. 

Draco leans behind Harry to set his glass down on a picnic table as an excuse to speak low in Harry’s ear. “I’m not fucking you against a tree tonight, Harry Potter.”

Harry tries to play fair, most of the time. Now, he lets his magic wrap itself around Draco’s wrist and his waist, tendrils of it creeping up his arms and down his arse, over his thighs, like dripping metal searching for a way under Draco’s skin. He whispers back, “Then fuck me somewhere else.”

Draco groans, grabs Harry’s hand, and whisks him away from the bonfire in the direction of the lake. Harry can’t help but break into a triumphant smile, which he tries to stifle when Draco glares at him as he marches them along. “Hide us, please,” Draco says, and Harry does, letting a veil drop around them so that they won’t draw any attention.

When they reach the lakeside, Draco pulls out his hawthorn wand and casts tiny pinpricks of light, like fireflies dancing over their heads. Enough to let them see each other up close, but not much more. Harry’s expecting Draco to pounce on him given the mood, and he does, at first, holding the back of Harry’s head for an aggressive open-mouthed kiss.

But the kiss softens, and Draco’s grip softens, so that a few moments later, Harry is wrapped in Draco’s arms and falling into the intoxicating exploration of Draco’s mouth, chin, jaw, eyelids, brow—all with lips that know this face better than any other but never tire of mapping it. Draco’s grip lowers and he pulls Harry in by the arse, giving them both some needed friction. Not nearly enough.

Harry’s tempted to disappear their clothes, but he has the control to restrain himself. Instead he lets Draco undress him, because he knows how much Draco likes to manhandle him out of his jumper and jeans. It’s the last night of October and there’s the promise of snow in the air, so the cold would be nearly unbearable if not for the warmth of Draco’s rough palms over his skin, and his hot mouth on Harry’s neck, sending waves of heat down his spine.

Draco runs his hands over Harry’s shoulders, down his chest, teasing his hardened nipples as he moves down to Harry’s hips and around the globes of his arse. “Merlin, you’re beautiful,” Draco says, and he pauses in his exploration long enough to gaze at Harry with those expressive eyes that scared him the first night they were together. He should have known he was in trouble then. He probably did.

Harry’s achingly hard and restless, so he endures Draco’s pause for only a few moments before he starts pawing at Draco’s clothes. They manage to get Draco naked together, and Harry admires his muscular frame as Draco lowers himself onto the ground, planting his arse on his own jumper. If Harry weren’t so blindingly horny, he could admire Draco like this for hours, but when Draco bends his knees and takes Harry’s hand, inviting him to impale himself on Draco’s cock, he can’t focus on anything but the ache in his balls. Draco’s thighs form a seatback and his cock stands thick and stiff as an iron rod right where Harry plans to sit.

Harry holds Draco’s hand while he straddles his waist, and then strains his own thigh muscles to lower himself as slowly as he can. Draco likes to take his time opening Harry with nothing but his fingers and a bottle of oil, but now Harry slicks and readies himself with a thought. He lets his weight ease itself down, driving Draco’s cock past the sensitive rim of his hole and then deeper and deeper inside him. The pressure on his prostate as his arse meets Draco’s hips and he leans back against Draco’s thighs causes him to clench around the almost unbearable pleasure, and Draco groans when he does, clutching at his hips to steady him. “Fuck, Harry.” Draco’s grey eyes pierce Harry with the intensity of their stare and Harry could weep for the love in them. 

“I love you,” Harry says out loud, because he doesn’t want Draco to ever again doubt that he returns that love.

Draco grips him tight in return and Harry trembles from the fullness, their connection tickling every nerve ending in his body. He spent so much time worrying about the way his magic grasps at Draco, but he gives himself over to it now, revelling in the melding of their bodies and something deeper inside. It’s visceral pleasure, his cock leaking and balls tight, spiralling pleasure where Draco thrusts up into his prostate, but it’s also the beat of his heart synchronised with Draco’s, the blood in his veins molten with Draco’s heat. 

He moans as Draco bounces him in his lap, pleasure peaking so quickly that he almost tips over the edge. Draco feels it coming and grasps the base of Harry’s cock, tight, holding back the orgasm. “Not yet,” he groans. “Hold on for me.”

Draco has given him blanket permission to let his magic play when they’re like this, so he reaches out with it to rub at Draco’s arsehole, breaching him just enough to jolt Draco into a more steady thrust, forcing him to loosen his grip on Harry’s cock, so that he’s wildly arching into Harry while Harry pushes down onto him. The cold is long forgotten as Harry’s fingers slip over Draco’s sweaty chest, the old scar soft under Harry’s thumb. He leans forward and braces himself to lift and drop himself, each stroke of Draco’s cock a hammer at that sensitive gland, pushing him higher and higher until he explodes, spilling into Draco’s hand, shuddering with pleasure as Draco strokes him through the release. Harry lets out something like a whine as his body shakes through it, Draco pounding into him until he stiffens and jerks his own hot release into Harry.

“Fuck, Harry. Oh fuck.”

Harry sees stars, or maybe it’s Draco’s firefly lights. He feels himself flying apart until Draco eases Harry off his flagging erection and gathers him in his arms. The cold grass that prickles his side as he lies next to Draco is soothing on his overheated skin, and helps to put him back together, Draco’s solid, humming presence like a balm to his overstimulated nerves. When he finally catches his breath, he sighs into Draco’s shoulder, nipping at the hard muscle there. “I don’t know which one of us should be more embarrassed for how quick that was,” Harry says. 

“Definitely you, love,” Draco says, kissing the top of Harry’s head the way he does so often now. 

Harry would protest but it was definitely him. He’d been ready to go off almost the minute Draco took his hand and pulled him away from the bonfire. “Fucking incredible, anyway.”

“Always,” Draco says.

They’re quiet for a bit, breathing together, the buzz of energy between them mellowing into a solid thing, holding them fast. “I’ve been thinking,” Harry says, when he realises they’ll have to return to the bonfire soon. “I have an idea." 

“Terrifying. What is it?”

Harry’s actually given this a lot of thought, but he’s not sure what Draco will make of it. “What if we start a summer camp for young witches and wizards? A proper Muggle-type camp on the land in Banchory.” He wants to say it’s their land, but it’s going to take some time for Draco to accept that what’s Harry’s is his. “You could teach the kids to fly-fish and I could take them on nature walks. We could give them a couple of weeks in the woods, maybe even teach them something about magical practices in other cultures.”

He looks up at Draco and is relieved to find Draco smiling back at him. “Do you think the kids would come?”

“I know a handful that would, and if they like it, they’ll tell their friends for the next summer.” 

“Teddy,” Draco says, because he knows how often Teddy asks about visiting Scotland now that they’re back.

“Yes, and Rose and Hugo. Victoire. I’m sure there are others.”

“Cate. And I bet Greg’s daughter, Sarah, would come,” Draco says. “Hell, what am I saying? Harry Potter’s summer camp? They’ll be beating down your door.”

He’s not so sure, but he wants to give it a try. He enjoyed mentoring students at Hogwarts all those years ago, and he loves exploring the land around his cabin. A camp seems the perfect way to marry two things he thinks he has to offer, and Draco is a natural teacher and guide. “Harry and Draco’s summer camp. We could build cabins. Do you think there’s time?” Draco has no plans to sail this year, and although Harry isn’t sure that they’ll never join Akseli’s crew again, they’ve settled in Scotland for the foreseeable future.

“I do. I built my hut on Lake Niemisjärvet. I can teach you some basic carpentry.”

“Such talented hands,” Harry says, and Draco pinches his arse with one of those talented hands.

“There’s something else,” Draco says, and then he sits up, pulling Harry with him. He looks self-conscious, but he never breaks eye contact. “I let my mother show McGonagall my book chapters. She’s invited me to guest lecture in the spring semester.”

“That’s amazing!” Harry is astounded by how much more open Draco has become in the last couple of months, to people and possibilities.

“I said no. Maybe another year, but I think I want to finish my book, after I finish yours,” Draco says. “And I want time to fish.” He winks at that, but Harry knows he means it. It’s going to be a huge life change for him to leave the trawlers and Finland behind. Having time on the River Dee is part of that trade-off. And they already have an ice fishing trip to Finland planned for February. Harry’s not wildly excited about it, other than the possible ways they might keep each other warm at night. He’s thrilled that Draco wants to finish his book.

“Then you’ll write and we’ll build cabins in the spring.” Harry savours the feeling of excitement, of looking forward, which is still so novel. He feels reborn, and in a way he is.

“And we can fish in between,” Draco says, pulling Harry in for a last kiss before they have to dress and return to the festivities.

“Always,” Harry says, because fishing changed Draco’s life, and Draco saved Harry’s.


	15. Chapter 15

_18 December, 2014_

It turns out Draco hates book signings. The only part of the whole affair that’s been bearable has been having Harry’s company through it. And as rough as it’s been for him, it’s been worse for Harry. Harry’s the star of this show, which suits Draco just fine. He only wishes he could have made it easier for Harry. 

They’ve come to London to finish the tour, delivering their very last reading and signing at Flourish and Blotts. They reserved seats for their family and friends at the front of the standing room only crowd, and the manager has just locked the door against the last customer. Only their nearest and dearest remain. Molly, Arthur, and Wanda corner Harry as soon as the door is shut, and Draco watches him over his mother’s shoulder.

“He looks well,” Narcissa says. “You both do.”

Draco will never look at Harry and not see the stone cold fox he fell in love with. And it’s true that he’s healthier these days. He eats and sleeps better. Most of all, he’s happy. He’s trimmed his hair for the tour, and he looks almost distinguished in his fitted linen suit. Draco sometimes misses the long mane and heavy scruff he grew aboard the Lunastus, but book-tour Harry is a heart-stopping beauty. Tonight, though, Draco thinks Harry looks tired. He hides it well, but the constant excavation of his past by hordes of strangers, along with the hero-worship he finds so tiresome, have worn him down.

“I’m glad we could spend some time in London,” Draco says.

And he means that. It’s been good for Harry to reconnect with the Weasleys, and Draco is happy to see his mother and the others—Andromeda, Teddy, Pansy, Grim, and Cate. He and Harry had a lovely dinner last night with Ron and Hermione and their kids. He’s grown fond of Rose and Hugo, who both combine their mother’s dazzling intelligence and their father’s good humour, but to very different effect. He got to know them better last summer at the inaugural run of ‘Harry and Draco’s Magical Deeside Camp for Young Witches and Wizards,’ which Teddy insisted they shorten to ‘Magical Deeside.’ Their lives are full to bursting, and Draco is grateful for all the ways Harry has purged his life of loneliness. But right now, Draco’s counting the minutes until he can take Harry home, alone.

“You wrote a beautiful book, Draco. You should be proud.”

Draco drags his attention away from Harry and turns it to his mother. She looks well, too. Ciaran Glas probably has something to do with that, and Draco has come to decide that the man’s not so bad. A little jolly for Draco’s taste, but he can’t argue with his mother’s happiness. “Thank you, Mother. That means a lot to me. It helped to have such a gripping story to tell.” 

She squeezes his hand and kisses his cheek. “Poor Harry,” she says, which is the sum of his mother’s thoughts on Harry’s life prior to his relationship with Draco. Thankfully, she doesn’t dwell. “We’ll see you at Christmas. Why don’t you collect your beau and go home. I know it’s been a long tour.”

His beau. Harry is more than that. He’s fairly certain that Harry has no interest in marriage as an institution, but Draco is drawn to the symbolism of it. He doesn’t need it to know what they are to each other, but there’s a part of him that craves a rite to commemorate who they’ve become.

Harry saved his life once, and then shortly after, ensured his freedom. All these years later, Harry’s given him something even more dear—not only love, though that’s the foundation, but the clarity to know who he is, to know that he became someone not entirely new, but better, and most importantly, worthy. Hermione has told Draco a number of times how moved she was to find him so changed at the reunion, but what she doesn’t realise, and maybe no one does apart from Harry, is that in some ways the change he underwent in the months that followed was even more dramatic. He might have spent his whole life in opposition to his past if it weren’t for Harry.

Harry has said to him, in so many ways, “what’s mine is yours.” His home in Banchory, his friends and family, even his life story—all of it offered to Draco with a humbling degree of trust. Draco’s tried to reciprocate. He’s given Harry a Muggle key to his flat in Helsinki, which they’ve decided to hold onto. He’ll take Harry back to Lake Niemisjärvet this winter, and although Harry didn’t take to ice fishing quite the way Draco had hoped, he certainly found some inventive ways for them to spend their time in the hut. They’re even talking of sailing with Akseli, Eetu, and the rest of the crew for a month in June, before the summer campers arrive.

So he doesn’t need Harry to marry him to know that their lives are intertwined, that they belong to each other. It’s only that he’s given himself so little permission to celebrate or even acknowledge passages in his life since the war, and now he’s yearning to celebrate his joy.

His joy is currently dampened by bone-deep weariness from six weeks cooped up in hotels and bookstores, with almost no time outdoors, no physical exertion, and no time to fish. 

“Draco,” his mother says, breaking into his thoughts. He realises he’s been staring at Harry but hasn’t moved to extract him from the small crowd around him. “You’re allowed to tell him what you want.”

He’s startled by the words and finds his mother looking up at him with a fondness he took for granted for so long. His mother is no mind reader, which means his thoughts must be written on his face. Or perhaps it’s simply that she’s come to know him well again. “I suppose I could,” he says, even though it terrifies him. Even though there’s still a part of him that doesn’t feel deserving. His mother smiles at him in return, and refrains from offering any further advice.

This time, when he looks up, Harry is on his way towards him, and he nearly collapses with relief. He meets him halfway, pulls him into a hug, and asks, “Can we go?” 

“Please,” Harry says, and he sags in Draco’s arms. “No long goodbyes. We’ll see them all at Christmas.”

The two of them exit the store with no more than a, “See you all soon,” and a wave, and then, out on the pavement in front of Flourish and Blotts, they take each other’s hand and Apparate to Scotland.

The first thing Draco notices is the uncanny quiet, an unearthly stillness, and then he looks up and big, fat snowflakes wet his face. Harry squeezes his hand, and when he looks at Harry his eyes are wide and there’s childlike glee on his face. Draco realises that they’re standing in nearly a foot of snow. The porch light is on, and although it’s dark beyond the ring it casts on the drive, he can make out the blanket of snow on the hill above them, the heavy sag of it on the branches of the spruce trees that surround the three summer cabins they built into the edge of the wood, and the way it’s piled on the roof and the porch rails of their home like frosting on a gingerbread house. It’s gorgeous, and before he can comment, Harry laughs and throws himself at Draco, toppling them both into the snow.

Draco doesn’t have a chance to catch his breath when Harry, on top of him, licks wet snow off his lips and then slides his tongue into Draco’s mouth. The kiss is almost enough to combat the cold and wet seeping through the thin suit he’s wearing. Almost. But before he can complain, he’s enveloped in dry heat. Sometimes Harry’s magic is remarkably considerate. The way it calls to him and he calls back has changed. It’s still electric, intoxicating at times, but it’s just as often a calming, settling bond that flows between them.

He hums into Harry’s mouth and closes his eyes, sinking deeper into the pillow of snow under him. “I’m too tired for sex,” he says. And damn if he doesn’t feel old.

Harry tucks his face into Draco’s neck. “There’s always tomorrow.”

“And the day after that.” Thank Merlin, Harry’s not going anywhere.

“Will you fish?” Harry asks.

“I’d like to. Grayling is in season. Maybe tomorrow afternoon. I plan to spend the morning ravishing you.”

“Mmm,” Harry says, burrowing closer to Draco. “Acceptable.”

They’re quiet for a few minutes, breathing together and enjoying the peace. Finally, Harry lifts himself off of Draco and gives Draco a hand out of the snow. “To bed, Malfoy.”

If Draco weren’t so tired, he’d wipe that smirk off Harry’s face. Instead all he can do is grin in return. “To bed, Potter.”

They trudge up the snow-covered steps and Harry removes the wards on the door, letting them into their home. It’s cold for all of two minutes as they make their way to the bedroom, but Harry quickly warms the air and Draco pulls out his wand to kindle the logs they’ve left on the hearth into a welcome fire. They undress quickly, use the bathroom in turns, and manage to be curled up in bed in no time.

They haven’t spent a night apart since they left the Lunastus well over a year ago, but the strain of their days these last six weeks has put a corresponding strain on their nights. The comfort of their own home, the promise of a day spent outside in the snow, and Harry finally relaxing in his arms is like a sweet exhale. There’s so much he wants to say, but he’s content to wait until they’ve both had some sleep.

He’s close to drifting off when Harry rolls over in his arms to face him, running fingers through Draco’s long hair and kissing him soundly on the mouth. “What’s on your mind?” Harry says when he comes up for air.

Draco opens his eyes and peers at Harry. It’s too dark and he’s too close to see more than the gleam of his eyes in the dying light of the fire. “I’m half asleep. What makes you think I have anything on my mind?”

“There’s always something going on in that busy brain of yours, Draco. You’ve been trying to tell me something for weeks,” Harry says. “I want to hear it now.”

There has been a lot on his mind, even if he’s muddled from fatigue right now. “I don’t think I can stand another book tour,” he confesses. It’s too late to back out now with the advance in the bank, the release date set, and the tour scheduled for May, but he’s started to question the wisdom of publishing _The World is a Magical Place: A Survey of Magical Practices Through Time and Across Cultures_. He dreads promoting it. 

Harry plants a kiss on his nose and sighs. “I’m going with you. Maybe we can make it short this time. It’s such an important book, sweetheart. Once it’s over, you’ll be glad.”

Will he? Perhaps. “Are you glad, now? This hasn’t been too much for you?”

Harry doesn’t hesitate. “I am. So glad. You told my story in the only way I could live with. The tour has been tough, but I had you there, and now I can put it behind me.”

Draco is excited for people to read his book. Maybe after a few months in Scotland and the promise of a quick tour with Harry at his side, he’ll be glad on the other end, too. He tries to muster a smile, because he will get through it. He wouldn’t have finished writing the book, let alone had the opportunity to publish it, if it weren’t for Harry. 

“There’s something else, I think,” Harry says, reading Draco’s mood.

_You’re allowed to tell him what you want. _Draco pulls back a fraction on the pillow, so he can see Harry’s face. He runs his palm down Harry’s neck and grips him at the nape. He takes a deep breath and decides there’s no point to a preamble. “I’d like us to be married. I know it’s not what you want, and it’s okay. I’m okay without it. But you want to know what’s on my mind. I want to marry you.” 

Harry blinks at him. He’s still under Draco’s touch, but something warm and wonderful travels up Draco’s arm from where he has Harry in his grasp. “You’re wrong,” he says. “There’s nothing I’d like more than to be married to you. I’d hate a big society wedding, splashed over the front page of the Daily Prophet, but the part with you and me? Yes, if you’re asking.”

Draco’s heart stops for a split second, his thoughts stuttering over Harry’s earnest expression and incredible reply. When his heart starts again, it’s a gallop and he has to gather Harry close to keep himself from flying apart. “You’ll marry me?”

“I will,” Harry whispers into his ear.

When Draco’s imagined it, they’ve been standing on the deck of the Lunastus, Akseli officiating, as he did for Nora and Eva several years ago. “In June? At sea?”

Harry nods into his shoulder. “Sure. What about our friends and family?”

Friends and family. They’re so lucky to have both.

“Maybe a small party at the close of camp?” Last year, they’d concluded Magical Deeside by inviting all the campers’ parents, along with their closest friends and family, up to Banchory for a festive picnic. Rose, Cate, and Millie’s twins had given a fly-fishing lesson to some of the parents. Teddy and Victoire had led a long walk through the Maryfield wood. Hugo and Sarah Goyle had shown off their blossoming carpentry skills. Arthur and Molly Weasley had come, his mother and Ciaran, too. Neville and Luna. Everyone they might invite to an intimate wedding.

“Perfect,” Harry says. And Draco feels it all then as he kisses Harry with promise—love and hope and gratitude, and he and Harry on a path winding into the future.

_The End_

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for sticking with this story to the end. I really had no idea what I was taking on when I started writing. No matter how much research I did, writing about places I've never been and work I know next to nothing about means I've surely made some ghastly errors in my depictions of both. By absolute coincidence, having nothing to do with this story, I ended up in Helsinki during my last week of writing. So I was able to sharpen those details after having only been there once before, though I'm certain there are ways I've mischaracterized it, writing as an outsider. 
> 
> I left Helsinki for Oslo before I had to finish the story, so I couldn't resist slipping in a couple of oblique SKAM references, for those who noticed. I apologize to anyone who knows more about these places, people, or about fly-fishing or trawling than I do. You may find my characterizations wildly off base. I ran down endless trails of research but I'm sure I missed all sorts of details. It turns out trawling in the Baltic and North Sea is incredibly complicated work. And while I loved the idea of Draco and his fellow fishermen and women caring deeply about sustainability, it's of course very difficult to trawl sustainably. What I knew about these topics before I started could fit on the head of a pin, and what I know now is only marginally more. I can only say that while I generally think "write what you know" is good advice, in this case, it was great fun to attempt to write what I don't know, however flawed the product might be in the end.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! Please support the author by clicking on the kudos button and leaving a comment below! ♥


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